LITERARY   CHAPTERS 


WRITINGS  or  W.  L.  GEORGE 
Hovels 

THE  STRANGERS'  WEDDING 
THE  SECOND  BLOOMING 
A  BED  OF  ROSES 
THE  CITY  OF  LIGHT 

UNTIL  THE  DAY  BREAK 

(English  title,  Israel  Kalitch) 

THE  LITTLE  BELOVED 

(English  title,  The  Making  of  an  Englishman) 

OLGA  NAZIMOV,  SHORT  STORIES 

flbtecellaneous 
WOMAN  AND  TO-MORROW 
DRAMATIC  ACTUALITIES 
ANATOLE  FRANCE 
THE  INTELLIGENCE  OF  WOMAN 
LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


BY 
W.   L.  GEORGE 


Copyright,  1918, 
BY  W.  L.  GEORGE 


All  rights  reserved 
Published,  March,  1918 


Norfoooti  }3rrsa 

Set  up  and  electrotyped  by  J.  S.  Gushing  Co.,  Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 
Presswork  by  S.  J.  Parkhill  &  Co.,  Boston,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


PREFATORY  NOTE 

THE  chapters  that  follow  have  been  written 
in  varying  moods,  and  express  the  fluctuating 
feelings  aroused  in  the  author  by  the  modern 
novel  and  its  treatment  at  the  hands  of  the 
public.  Though  unrelated  with  the  novel,  the 
chapters  on  "  Falstaff ",  "  The  Esperanto  of 
Art",  and  "The  Twilight  of  Genius"  have 
been  included,  either  because  artistically  in 
keeping  with  other  chapters,  or  because  their 
general  implications  affect  the  fiction  form. 

A  half  of  the  book  has  not  before  now  been 
published  in  the  United  States  of  America  or 
Canada. 


A  DECEPTIVE  DEDICATION 


I  HAVE  shown  the  manuscript  of  this  book  to 
a  well-known  author.  One  of  those  staid, 
established  authors  whose  venom  has  been 
extracted  by  the  mellow  years.  My  author  is 
beyond  rancour  and  exploit;  he  has  earned 
the  right  to  bask  in  his  own  celebrity,  and  needs 
to  judge  no  more,  because  no  longer  does  he  fear 
judgment.  He  is  like  a  motorist  who  has 
sowed  his  wild  petrol.  He  said  to  me:  "You 
are  very,  very  unwise.  I  never  criticise  my 
contemporaries,  and,  believe  me,  it  doesn't 
pay." 

Well,  I  am  unwise;  I  always  was  unwise, 
and  this  has  paid  in  a  coin  not  always  recog- 
nised, but  precious  to  a  man's  spiritual  pride. 
Why  should  I  not  criticise  my  contemporaries  ? 
It  is  not  a  merit  to  be  a  contemporary.  Also, 
they  can  return  the  compliment;  some  of 

vii 


A  DECEPTIVE  DEDICATION 

them,  if  I  may  venture  upon  a  turn  of  phrase 
proper  for  Mr.  Tim  Healy,  have  returned  the 
compliment  before  they  got  it.  It  may  be  un- 
wise, but  I  join  with  Voltaire  in  thanking  God 
that  he  gave  us  folly.  So  I  will  affront  the 
condemnatory  vagueness  of  wool  and  fleecy 
cloud,  be  content  to  think  that  nobody  will 
care  where  I  praise,  that  everybody  will  think 
me  impertinent  where  I  judge.  I  will  be  con- 
tent to  believe  that  the  well-known  author  will 
not  mind  if  I  criticise  him,  and  that  the  others 
will  not  mind  either.  I  will  hope,  though  some- 
thing of  a  Sadducee,  that  there  is  an  angel  in 
their  hearts. 

I  want  to  criticise  them  and  their  works  be- 
cause I  think  the  novel,  this  latest-born  of 
literature,  immensely  interesting  and  important. 
It  is  interesting  because,  more  faithfully  than 
any  other  form,  it  expresses  the  mind  of  man, 
his  pains  that  pass,  his  hopes  that  fade  and  are 
born  again,  his  discontent  pregnant  with  energy, 
the  unrulinesses  in  which  he  misspends  his 
vigour,  the  patiences  that  fit  him  to  endure  all 
things  even  though  he  dare  them  not.  In  this, 

viii 


A  DECEPTIVE  DEDICATION 

other  forms  fail :  history,  because  it  chronicles 
battles  and  dates,  yet  not  the  great  movements 
of  the  peoples;  economics,  because  in  their 
view  all  men  are  vile;  biography,  because  it 
leads  the  victim  to  the  altar,  but  never  sacrifices 
it.  Even  poetry  fails ;  I  do  not  try  to  shock, 
but  I  doubt  whether  the  poetic  is  equal  to  the 
prose  form. 

I  do  not  want  to  fall  into  the  popular  fallacy 
that  prose  and  poetry  each  have  their  own 
field,  strictly  preserved,  for  prose  is  not  always 
prosy,  nor  poetry  always  poetic;  prose  may 
contain  poetry,  poetry  cannot  contain  prose, 
—  just  as  some  gentlemen  are  bounders,  but  no 
bounders  are  gentlemen.  But  the  admiration 
many  people  feel  for  poetry  derives  from  a  lack 
of  intelligence  rather  than  from  an  excess  of 
emotion,  and  they  would  be  cured  if,  instead  of 
admiring,  they  read.  Some  subjects  and  ideas 
naturally  fall  into  poetry,  mainly  the  lyric 
ideas;  "To  Anthea",  and  "The  Skylark" 
would,  in  prose,  lie  broken-pinioned  upon  the 
ground,  but  the  exquisiteness  of  poetry  when  it 
conveys  the  ultimate  aspiration  of  man,  defines 

2i 


A  DECEPTIVE  DEDICATION 

its  limitations.  Poetry  is  child  of  the  aus- 
terity of  literature  by  the  sensuality  of  music. 
Thus,  it  is  more  and  less  than  its  forbears; 
speaking  for  myself  alone,  I  feel  that  "Epi- 
psychidion"  and  the  "Grecian  Urn"  are 'just 
a  little  less  than  the  Kreutzer  Sonata,  that 
Browning  and  Whitman  might  have  written 
better  in  prose,  though  they  might  thus  have 
been  less  quoted.  For  poetry  is  too  often 
schwaermerei,  a  thing  of  lilts ;  when  it  conveys 
philosophical  ideas,  as  in  Browning  and  in  that 
prose  writer  gone  astray,  Shakespeare,  it  suffers 
the  agonising  pains  of  constriction.  Rhyme 
and  scansion  tend  to  limit  and  hamper  it; 
everything  can  be  said  in  prose,  but  not  in 
poetry ;  to  prose  no  licence  need  be  granted, 
while  poetry  must  use  and  abuse  it,  for  prose 
is  free,  poetry  shackled  by  its  form.  No 
doubt  that  is  why  poetry  causes  so  much  stir, 
for  it  surmounts  extraordinary  difficulties,  and 
men  gape  as  at  a  tenor  who  attains  a  top  note. 
However  exquisite,  the  scope  of  poetry  is  smaller 
than  that  of  prose,  and  if  any  doubt  it,  let  him 
open  at  random  an  English  Bible  and  say  if 

35 


A  DECEPTIVE  DEDICATION 

Milton  can  out- thunder  Job,  or  Swinburne 
outcloy  the  sweetness  of  Solomon's  Song. 

More  than  interesting,  the  novel  is  impor- 
tant because,  low  as  its  status  may  be,  it  does 
day  by  day  express  mankind,  and  mankind  in 
the  making.  Sometimes  it  is  the  architect  that 
places  yet  another  brick  upon  the  palace  of  the 
future.  Always  it  is  the  showman  of  life.  I 
think  of  "serious  books",  of  the  incredible 
heaps  of  memoirs,  works  on  finance,  strategy, 
psychology,  sociology,  biology,  omniology  — 
that  fall  every  day  like  manna  (unless  from 
another  region  they  rise  as  fumes)  into  the 
baskets  of  the  reviewers.  All  this  paper  — 
they  dance  their  little  dance  to  four  hundred 
readers  and  a  great  number  of  second-hand 
booksellers,  and  lo !  the  dust  of  their  decay  is 
on  their  brow.  They  live  a  little  longer  than 
an  article  by  Mr.  T.  P.  O'Connor,  and  live  a 
little  less. 

The  novel,  too,  does  not  live  long,  but  I  have 
known  one  break  up  a  happy  home,  and  an- 
other teach  revolt  to  several  daughters;  can 
we  give  greater  praise?  Has  so  much  been 

ad 


A  DECEPTIVE  DEDICATION 

achieved  by  any  work  entitled  "The  Founda- 
tions of  the  Century",  or  something  of  that 
sort?  The  novel,  despised  buffoon  that  it  is, 
pours  out  its  poison  and  its  pearls  within  reach 
of  every  lip ;  its  heroes  and  heroines  offer  ex- 
amples to  the  reader  and  make  him  say :  "That 
bold,  bad  man,  —  you  wouldn't  think  it  to 
look  at  me,  who'm  a  linen-draper,  but  it's  me." 
If,  in  this  preface,  I  may  introduce  a  personal 
reminiscence,  I  can  strengthen  my  point  by 
saying  that  after  publishing  "The  Second 
Blooming",  I  received  five  letters  from  women 
I  did  not  know,  who  wholly  recognised  them- 
selves in  my  principal  heroine,  of  course  the 
regrettable  one. 

The  novel  moulds  by  precept  and  example, 
and  therefore  we  modern  jesters,  inky  trouba- 
dours, are  responsible  for  the  grey  power  which 
we  wield  behind  the  throne.  Given  this  re- 
sponsibility, it  is  a  pity  there  should  be  so  many 
novels,  for  the  reader  is  distracted  with  various 
examples,  and  painfully  hesitates  between  the 
career  of  Raffles  and  that  of  John  Inglesant. 
It  is  a  pity  that  the  economists  should  be  right 

xii 


A   DECEPTIVE  DEDICATION 


when  they  tell  us  that  bad  coin  drives  out  good, 
for  likewise  the  bad  novel  drives  out  the  good 
one.  True,  in  the  end  the  good  novel  comes 
back,  but  no  longer  as  the  living  torch  of  the 
time ;  it  comes  back  as  a  historical  monument. 
But  even  so,  while  the  torch  burned,  it  fired 
many  a  sanctimoniousness,  made  lurid  many  a 
hesitating  life.  If  only  we  could  endow  it ! 
But  we  cannot,  for  the  old  saying  can  be 
garbled:  Call  no  novelist  famous  until  he  is 
dead. 

It  is  a  fascinating  idea,  this  one  of  endowing 
the  novel.  In  principle  it  is  not  difficult,  only 
we  must  assume  our  capable  committee,  and 
that  is  quite  as  difficult  as  ignoring  the  weight 
of  the  elephant.  I  wonder  what  would  happen 
if  an  Act  of  Parliament  were  to  endow  genius ! 
I  wonder  who  would  sit  on  the  sub-committee 
appointed  by  the  British  Government  to  endow 
literature.  I  do  not  wonder,  I  know.  There 
would  be  Professor  Saintsbury,  Mr.  Austin 
Dobson,  Professor  Walter  Raleigh,  Sir  Sidney 
Lee,  Professor  Gollancz,  all  the  academics,  all 
the  people  drier  than  the  drought,  who,  whether 

xiii 


A  DECEPTIVE  DEDICATION 

the  god  of  literature  find  himself  in  the  car  or 
in  the  cart,  never  fail  to  get  into  the  dickey.  I 
should  not  even  wonder  if,  by  request  of  the 
municipality  of  Burton-on-Trent,  it  were  found 
desirable  to  infuse  a  democratic  element  into 
the  sub-committee  by  adding  the  manager  of 
the  Army  and  Navy  Stores  and,  of  course,  Mr. 
Bottomley.  Do  not  protest :  Mr.  Bottomley 
has  recently  passed  embittered  judgments, 
under  the  characteristic  heading  "  Dam-Nation  ", 
on  Mr.  Alec  Waugh,  who  ventured,  in  a  literary 
sketch,  to  show  English  soldiers  going  over  the 
top  with  oaths  upon  their  lips  and  the  courage 
born  of  fear  in  their  hearts.  I  think  Mr. 
Bottomley  would  like  to  have  Mr.  Waugh 
shot,  and  the  editor  of  The  Nation  confined  for 
seven  days  in  the  Press  Bureau,  for  having 
told  the  truth  in  literary  form.  I  do  not  im- 
pugn his  judgment  of  what  it  feels  like  to  go 
over  the  top,  for  he  has  had  long  experience  of 
keeping  strictly  on  the  surface. 

No,  our  sub-committee  would  be  appointed 
without  the  help  of  Thalia  and  Calliope.  It 
would  register  judgments  such  as  those  of  the 

xiv 


A  DECEPTIVE  DEDICATION 


famous  sub-committee  that  grants  the  Nobel 
Prizes.  That  committee,  during  its  short  life, 
has  managed  to  reward  Sully-Prudhomme  and 
to  leave  out  Swinburne,  to  give  a  prize  to 
Sienkiewicz,  whom  a  rather  more  recent  genera- 
tion has  found  so  suitable  for  the  cinema.  It 
has  even  given  a  prize  to  Mr.  Rudyard  Kipling, 
but  whether  in  memory  of  literature  or  dyna- 
mite is  not  known. 

So  literary  genius  must,  as  before,  look  for 
its  endowment  in  the  somewhat  barren  heart  of 
man,  and  continue  to  shed  a  hundred  seeds  in 
its  stony  places,  in  the  forlorn  hope  that  the 
fowls  of  the  air  may  not  devour  them  all,  and 
that  a  single  ear  of  corn  may  wilt  and  wither 
its  way  into  another  dawn. 


The  reading  of  most  men  and  women  pro- 
vides distressing  lists.  So  far  as  I  can  gather 
from  his  conversation,  the  ordinary,  busy  man, 
concerned  with  his  work,  finds  his  mental  sus- 
tenance in  the  newspapers,  particularly  in 
Punch,  in  the  illustrated  weeklies,  and  in  the 

xv 


A  DECEPTIVE  DEDICATION 

journals  that  deal  with  his  trade ;  as  for  imagi- 
native literature,  he  seems  to  confine  himself 
to  Mr.  Nat  Gould,  Sir  Arthur  Conan  Doyle, 
Mr.  W.  W.  Jacobs,  Mr.  Mason,  and  such  like, 
who  certainly  do  not  strain  his  imaginative 
powers.  He  is  greatly  addicted  to  humour  of 
the  coarser  kind,  and  he  dissipates  many  of  his 
complexes  by  means  of  vile  stories  which  he  ex- 
changes with  his  fellows ;  these  do  not  at  all 
represent  his  kindliness  and  his  respectability. 
Sometimes  he  reads  a  shocker,  the  sort  that  is 
known  as  "railway  literature",  presumably 
because  it  cannot  hold  the  attention  for  longer 
than  the  time  that  elapses  between  two  stops. 
The  more  serious  and  scholarly  man,  who 
abounds  in  every  club,  is  addicted  to  the 
monthly  reviews  (price  two-and-six ;  he  does 
not  like  the  shilling  ones),  to  the  Times,  to  the 
Spectator;  that  kind  of  man  is  definitely  stodgy 
and  prides  himself  upon  being  sound.  He  is 
fond  of  memoirs,  rather  sodden  accounts  of 
aristocrats  and  politicians,  of  the  dull,  ordinary 
lives  of  dull,  ordinary  people;  when  he  has 
done  with  the  book  it  goes  to  the  pulping 

xvi 


A  DECEPTIVE  DEDICATION 


machine,  but  some  of  the  pulp  gets  into  that 
man's  brain.  (Ashes  to  ashes,  pulp  to  pulp?) 
He  likes  books  of  travel,  biographies,  solid 
French  books  (strictly  by  academicians),  politi- 
cal works,  economic  works.  His  conversation 
sounds  like  it,  and  that  is  why  his  wife  is  so 
bored ;  his  emotions  are  reflex  and  run  only 
round  the  objects  he  can  see ;  art  cannot  touch 
him,  and  no  feather  ever  falls  upon  his  brow 
from  an  airy  wing.  He  commonly  tells  you 
that  good  novels  are  not  written  nowadays; 
he  must  be  excused  that  opinion,  for  he  never 
tries  to  read  them.  The  only  novels  with 
which  the  weary  Titan  refreshes  his  mind  are 
those  of  Thackeray,  sometimes  of  Trollope; 
the  more  frivolous  sometimes  go  so  far  as  to 
sip  a  little  of  the  honey  that  falls  from  the 
mellifluous  lips  of  Mrs.  Humphry  Ward. 

The  condition  of  women  is  different.  They 
care  for  little  that  ends  in  "ic",  and  so  their 
consumption  of  novels  is  enormous.  The  com- 
monplace woman  is  attracted  by  the  illustrated 
dailies  and  weeklies,  but  she  also  needs  large 
and  continuous  doses  of  religious  sentimentality 
xvii 


A  DECEPTIVE  DEDICATION 


of  papier-mache  romance,  briefly,  of  novels  de- 
scribed in  literary  circles  as  "bilge",  such  as 
the  works  of  Mr.  Hall  Caine,  Mrs.  Barclay, 
Miss  E.  M.  Dell,  and  a  great  many  more;  if 
she  is  of  the  slightly  faster  kind  that  gives 
smart  lunch  parties  at  the  Strand  Corner 
House,  her  diet  is  sometimes  a  little  stronger; 
she  takes  to  novels  of  the  orchid  house  and  the 
tiger's  lair,  to  the  artless  erotics  of  Miss  Elinor 
Glyn,  Mr.  Hubert  Wales,  and  Miss  Victoria 
Cross.  She  likes  memoirs  too,  memoirs  of 
vague  Bourbons  and  salacious  Bonapartes; 
she  takes  great  pleasure  in  the  historical  irreg- 
ularities of  cardinals.  She  likes  poetry  too, 
as  conveyed  by  Mrs.  Ella  Wheeler  Wilcox. 

If  that  type  of  woman  were  not  a  woman, 
the  arts  could  base  as  few  hopes  on  her  as  they 
do  on  men,  but  the  most  stupid  woman  is 
better  ground  than  the  average  man,  because 
she  is  open,  while  he  is  smug.  So  it  is  no 
wonder  that  among  the  millions  of  women  who 
mess  and  muddle  their  way  through  the  con- 
servatories and  pigsties  of  literature,  should  be 
found  the  true  reading  public,  the  women  who 
xviii 


A  DECEPTIVE  DEDICATION 

are  worth  writing  for,  who  read  the  best  Eng- 
lish novels,  who  are  in  touch  with  French  and 
Russian  literature,  who  read  plays,  and  even 
essays,  ancient  and  modern.  Hail  Mary,  mother 
of  mankind ;  but  for  thee  the  arts  must  starve ! 
That  fine  public  cannot  carry  us  very  far. 
They  are  not  enough  to  keep  literature  vigor- 
ous by  giving  it  what  it  needs :  a  consciousness 
of  fellowship  with  many  readers.  If  literature 
is  to  flourish  (of  which  I  am  not  sure,  though 
endure  in  some  form  it  will),  the  general  public 
taste  must  be  raised.  I  feel  that  taste  can  be 
raised  and  cultivated,  and  many  have  felt  that 
too.  From  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury onwards,  and  especially  since  1870,  an 
ascending  effort  has  been  made  to  stimulate 
the  taste  of  the  rising  artisan.  Books  like 
Lord  Avebury's  "Pleasures  of  Life",  like  "Ses- 
ame and  Lilies",  collections  such  as  the 
"Hundred  Best  Books"  and  the  "Hundred 
Best  Pictures",  have  all  been  attuned  to  that 
key.  The  only  pity  is  that  the  selections, 
nearly  all  of  them  excellent,  were  immeasurably 
above  the  heads  of  the  public  for  which  they 
xix 


A  DECEPTIVE  DEDICATION 

were  meant.  Two  recent  instances  are  worth 
analysing.  One  of  them  is  "A  Library  for  Five 
Pounds"  by  Sir  William  Robertson  Nicoll 
(whom  Mr.  Arnold  Bennett  delighteth  to  re- 
vile), the  other  "Literary  Taste  and  How  to 
Form  It",  by  Mr.  Bennett  himself.  Now 
Sir  William  Robertson  Nicoll's  book  is  much 
more  sensible  than  the  funereal  lists  available 
at  most  polytechnics.  The  author  does  not 
pretend  that  one  should  read  Plato  in  one's 
bath ;  he  seems  to  realise  the  state  of  mind  of 
the  ordinary,  fairly  busy,  fairly  willing,  fairly 
intelligent  person.  A  sign  of  it  is  that  he 
selects  only  sixty-one  works,  and  out  of  those 
allows  twenty-seven  novels.  Of  the  rest,  most 
are  readable,  except  "Pilgrim's  Progress"  and 
"The  Origin-  of  Species",  a  touching  couple. 
The  list  is  by  far  the  best  guide  I  have  ever 
seen,  but — there  is  not  a  living  author  in  it.  It 
is  not  a  library,  it  is  a  necropolis.  The  novel- 
ists that  Sir  William  Robertson  Nicoll  recom- 
mends are  Scott,  Jane  Austen,  Dickens, 
Thackeray,  Charlotte  Bronte,  George  Eliot, 
Hawthorne,  Trollope,  Blackmore,  Defoe,  and 

XX 


A  DECEPTIVE   DEDICATION 

Swift.  All  their  books  are  readable,  but  they 
do  not  take  by  the  hand  the  person  who  has 
thought  wrong  or  not  thought  at  all.  When 
you  want  to  teach  a  child  history,  you  do  not 
dump  upon  its  desk  Hume  and  Smollett,  in 
forty  volumes ;  you  lead  it  by  degrees,  by  means 
of  textbooks,  that  is,  according  to  plan.  That 
is  how  I  conceive  literary  education,  but  before 
suggesting  a  list,  let  us  glance  at  "Literary 
Taste  and  How  to  Form  It."  In  this  book  the 
author  shows  himself  much  more  unpractical 
and  much  less  sympathetic  than  Sir  William 
Robertson  Nicoll.  The  book  itself  is  very  in- 
teresting; it  is  bright,  intelligent;  it  teaches 
you  how  to  read,  and  how  to  make  allowances 
for  the  classics;  it  tells  you  how  you  may 
woo  your  way  to  Milton,  but,  after  all,  when 
you  have  done,  you  find  that  you  have  not 
wooed  your  way  an  inch  nearer.  That  is  be- 
cause Mr.  Arnold  Bennett  takes  up  to  his  pub- 
lic an  attitude  more  Iiighbrowed  than  I  could 
imagine  if  I  were  writing  a  skit  on  his  book. 
Mr.  Bennett's  idea  of  a  list  for  the  aspirant  to 
letters  is  to  throw  the  London  Library  at  his 
xxi 


A  DECEPTIVE  DEDICATION 

head ;  he  lays  before  us  a  stodgy  lump  of  two 
or  three  hundred  volumes,  many  of  them  excel- 
lent, and  many  more  absolutely  penal.  It  is 
enough  to  say  that  he  seriously  starts  his  list 
with  the  Venerable  Bede's  "Ecclesiastical  His- 
tory." Bede !  the  dimmest,  most  distant  of 
English  chroniclers,  who  depicts  the  dimmest 
and  most  distant  period  of  English  history; 
once,  in  an  A.B.C.,  I  saw  a  shopman  reading 
"Tono-Bungay",  which  was  propped  against 
the  cruet.  Does  Mr,  Bennett  imagine  that 
man  dropping  the  tear  of  emotion  and  the  gravy 
of  excitement  upon  the  Venerable  Bede  ?  And 
if  one  goes  on  with  the  list  and  discovers  the 
"Autobiography  of  Lord  Herbert  of  Cherbury ", 
"Religio  Medici",  Berkeley's  "Principles  of 
Human  Knowledge",  Reynolds'  "Discourses  on 
Art",  the  works  of  Pope,  "Voyage  of  the 
Beagle"  — one  comes  to  understand  how  such 
readers  may  have  been  made  by  such  masters. 
From  the  beginning  to  the  end  of  that  list  my 
mind  is  obsessed  by  the  word  "stodge",  and 
the  novels  do  not  relieve  it  much.  There  are 
a  good  many,  but  they  comprise  the  usual 
xxii 


A  DECEPTIVE  DEDICATION 

Thackeray,  Scott,  Dickens  —  need  I  go  on  ? 
Relief  is  found  only  in  Fielding,  Sterne,  and  in 
one  book  each  of  Marryat,  Lever,  Kingsley, 
and  Gissing.  These  authors  are  admitted  pre- 
sumably because  they  are  dead. 

In  all  this,  where  is  hope?  How  many 
green  daffodil  heads,  trying  to  burst  their  pain- 
ful way  through  the  heavy  earth  of  a  dull  life, 
has  Mr.  Bennett  trampled  on  ?  Is  it  impossible 
to  find  some  one  who  is  (as  Mr.  Bennett  cer- 
tainly is)  capable  of  the  highest  artistic  appre- 
ciation and  of  high  literary  achievement,  and 
who  will,  for  a  moment,  put  himself  in  the 
place  of  the  people  he  is  addressing?  Is  it 
impossible  for  an  adult  to  remember  that  as  a 
boy  he  hated  the  classics?  Has  he  forgotten 
that  as  a  young  man  he  could  be  charmed,  but 
educated  only  by  means  of  a  machine  like  the 
one  they  use  for  stuffing  geese?  The  people 
we  want  to  introduce  to  literature  are,  nearly 
all  of  them,  people  who  work ;  some  earn  thirty 
shillings  a  week,  and  ponder  a  great  deal  on 
how  to  live  on  it ;  some  earn  hundreds  a  year 
and  are  not  much  better  off;  all  are  occupied 
xxiii 


A  DECEPTIVE  DEDICATION 

with  material  cares,  their  work,  their  games, 
their  gardens,  their  loves;  nearly  all  are  short 
of  time,  and  expend  on  work,  transit  and  meals, 
ten  to  twelve  hours  a  day.  They  read  in  tubes 
and  omnibuses,  in  the  midst  of  awful  disturb- 
ance and  over  crowding;  also  they  are  deeply 
corrupted  by  the  daily  papers,  where  nothing 
over  a  column  is  ever  printed,  where  the  news 
are  conveyed  in  paragraphs  and  headlines,  so 
that  they  never  have  to  concentrate,  and  find 
it  difficult  to  do  so;  they  are  corrupted 
too  by  the  vulgarity  and  sensationalism  which 
are  the  bones  and  blood  of  the  magazines, 
until  they  become  unable  to  think  without 
stimulants. 

It  is  no  use  saying  those  people  are  lost. 
They  are  not  lost,  but  they  have  gone  astray, 
or  rather,  nobody  has  ever  tried  to  turn  their 
faces  the  right  way.  Certainly  Mr.  Arnold 
Bennett  does  nothing  for  them.  If  they  could 
read  "The  Decline  and  Fall  of  the  Roman 
Empire"  they  would,  but  they  cannot.  People 
cannot  plunge  into  old  language,  old  atmos- 
pheres ;  they  have  no  links  with  these  things ; 
xxiv 


A  DECEPTIVE  DEDICATION 

their  imagination  is  not  trained  to  take  a 
leap;  many  try,  and  nearly  all  fail  because 
their  literary  leaders  go  to  sleep,  or  march  them 
into  bogs.  No  crude  mind  can  jump  into 
ancient  literature;  modern  literature  alone 
can  help  it,  namely  cleanse  its  nearest  section, 
and  prepare  it  for  further  strain.  The  limits 
of  literary  taste  can,  in  each  person,  be  carried 
as  far  as  that  person's  intellectual  capacity 
goes,  but  only  by  degrees.  In  other  words, 
limit  your  objective  instead  of  failing  at  a 
large  operation. 

I  am  not  prepared  to  lay  down  a  complete 
list,  but  I  am  prepared  to  hint  at  one.  If  I 
had  to  help  a  crude  but  willing  taste,  I  would 
handle  its  reading  as  follows : 

FIRST  PERIOD.  Reading  made  up  exclu- 
sively of  recent  novels,  good,  well-written, 
thoughtful  novels,  not  too  startling  in  form  or 
contents.  I  would  begin  on  novels  because 
any  body  can  read  a  novel,  and  because  the 
first  cleansing  operation  is  to  induce  the  sub- 
ject to  read  good  novels  instead  of  bad  ones. 
Here  is  a  preliminary  list : 
xxv 


A  DECEPTIVE  DEDICATION 

"Tono-Bungay"  (Wells) 

"Kipps"  (Wells) 

"The  Custom  of  the  Country"  (Wharton) 

"The  Old  Wives'  Tale"  (Bennett) 

"The  Man  of  Property"  (Galsworthy) 

"Jude  the  Obscure"  (Hardy) 

"Tess  of  the  D'Urbervilles"  (Hardy) 

"Sussex  Gorse"  (Kaye-Smith) 
and  say  twenty  or  thirty  more  of  this  type,  all 
published  in  the  last  dozen  years.    It  is,  of 
course,  assumed  that  interest  would  be  main- 
tained by  conversation. 

SECOND  PERIOD.  After  the  subject  (vic- 
tim, if  you  like)  had  read  say  thirty  of  the 
best  solid  novels  of  the  twentieth  century,  I 
think  I  should  draw  him  to  the  more  abstruse 
modern  novels  and  stories.  In  the  first  period 
he  would  come  in  contact  with  a  general  criti- 
cism of  life.  In  the  second  period  he  would 
read  novels  of  a  more  iconoclastic  and  construc- 
tive kind,  such  as : 

"The  Island  Pharisees"  (Galsworthy) 

"The  New  Machiavelli"  (Wells) 

"Sinister  Street"  (Mackenzie) 
xxvi 


A  DECEPTIVE  DEDICATION  1 

"The  Celestial  Omnibus"  (Forster) 

"The  Longest  Journey"  (Forster) 

"Sons  and  Lovers"  (Lawrence) 

"The  White  Peacock"  (Lawrence) 

"Ethan  Frome"  (Wharton) 

"Round  the  Corner"  (Cannan) 
briefly,  the  more  ambitious  kind  of  novel,  say 
thirty  or  forty  altogether.     At  that  time,   I 
should  induce  the  subject  to  browse  occasionally 
in  the  "Oxford  Book  of  English  Verse." 

THIRD  PERIOD.  Now  only  would  I  come 
to  the  older  novels,  because,  by  then,  the 
mind  should  be  supple  enough  to  stand  their 
congestion  of  detail,  their  tendency  to  carica- 
ture, their  stilted  phrasing,  and  yet  recognise 
their  qualities.  Here  are  some : 

"The  Rise  of  Silas  Lapham"  (Howells) 

"Vanity  Fair"  (Thackeray) 

"The  Vicar  of  Wakefield"  (Goldsmith) 

"The  Way  of  All  Flesh"  (Butler) 

"Quentin  Durward"  (Scott) 

"Guy  Mannering"  (Scott) 
Briefly,  the  bulk  of  the  works  of  Thackeray, 
Jane  Austen,   Charlotte  Bronte,   and  George 
xxvii 


A  DECEPTIVE  DEDICATION 

Eliot.  "Barry  Lyndon"  twice,  and  Trollope 
never.  Here,  at  last,  the  solid  curriculum, 
but  only,  you  will  observe,  when  a  little  of 
the  mud  of  the  magazines  had  been  cleaned 
off.  Rather  more  verse  too,  beginning  with 
Tennyson  and  Henley,  passing  on  to  Rossetti 
and  perhaps  to  Swinburne.  Verse,  however, 
should  not  be  pressed.  But  I  think  I  should 
propose  modern  plays  of  the  lighter  kind,  Mr. 
Bernard  Shaw's  "Major  Barbara"  and  "John 
Bull's  Other  Island",  for  instance.  One  could 
pass  by  degrees  to  the  less  obvious  plays  of 
Mr.  Shaw,  certainly  to  those  of  St.  John  Han- 
kin,  and  perhaps  to  "The  Madras  House."  I 
think  also  a  start  might  be  made  on  foreign 
works,  but  these  would  develop  mainly  in  the 

FOURTH  PERIOD.     Good   translations  being 
available,  I  would  suggest  notably : 

"  Madame  Bovary"  (Flaubert) 

"Resurrection"  (Tolstoi) 

"Fathers  and  Children"  (Turgenev) 

Various  short  stories  of  Tchekoff. 
And  then,  if  the  subject  seemed  to  enjoy  these  works, 

"L'Education  Sentimentale  "  (Flaubert) 
xxviii 


A  DECEPTIVE  DEDICATION 


"Le  Rouge  et  le  Noir"  (Stendhal) 
"The  Brothers  Karamazov"  (Dostoievsky) 
Mark  this  well  —  if  the  subject  seemed  to  en- 
joy them.  If  there  is  any  strain,  any  boredom, 
there  is  lack  of  continuity,  and  a  chance  of 
losing  the  subject's  interest  altogether.  I 
think  the  motto  should  be  "Don't  press"; 
that  is  accepted  when  it  comes  to  golf;  why 
has  it  never  been  accepted  when  it  affects 
man?  This  period  would,  I  think,  end  with 
the  lighter  plays  of  Shakespeare,  such  as  "The 
Merry  Wives  of  Windsor",  "The  Taming  of 
the  Shrew",  and  perhaps  "Hamlet."  I  think 
modern  essays  should  also  come  in,  via  Mr. 
E.  V.  Lucas,  Mr.  Belloc,  and  Mr.  Street ;  also 
I  would  suggest  Synge's  travels  in  Wicklow, 
Connemara,  and  the  Arrah  Islands ;  this  would 
counteract  the  excessive  fictional  quality  of  the 
foregoing. 

FIFTH  PERIOD.  I  submit  that,  by  that  time, 
if  the  subject  had  a  good  average  mind, 
he  would  be  prepared  by  habit  to  read  older 
works  related  with  the  best  modern  works. 
The  essays  of  Mr.  Lucas  would  prepare  him 
xxix 


A  DECEPTIVE  DEDICATION 


for  the  works  of  Lamb;  those  of  Mr.  Belloc, 
for  the  essays  of  Carlyle  and  Bacon.  Thus 
would  I  lead  back  to  the  heavier  Victorian 
novels,  to  the  older  ones  of  Fielding  and  Sterne. 
If  any  taste  for  plays  has  been  developed  by 
Shakespeare,  it  might  be  turned  to  Marlowe, 
Congreve,  and  Sheridan.  The  drift  of  my 
argument  is :  read  the  easiest  first ;  do  not 
strain;  do  not  try  to  "improve  your  mind", 
but  try  to  enjoy  yourself.  Than  books  there 
is  no  better  company,  but  it  is  no  use  approach- 
ing them  as  dour  pedagogues.  Proceed  as  a 
snob  climbing  the  social  ladder  —  namely, 
know  the  best  people  in  the  neighbourhood, 
then  the  best  people  they  know.  The  end  is 
not  that  of  snobbery,  but  an  eternal  treasure. 

I  think  that  my  subject,  if  capable  of  develop- 
ing taste,  would  find  his  way  to  the  easier  classic 
works,  such  as  Carlyle's  "French  Revolution", 
Boswell's  "Life  of  Johnson",  perhaps  even  to 
Wesley's  "Journal."  But  at  that  stage  the 
subject  would  have  to  be  dismissed  to  live  or 
die.  Enough  would  have  been  done  to  lead 
him  away  from  boredom,  from  dull  solemnity 

XXX 


A  DECEPTIVE  DEDICATION 

and  false  training,  to  purify  his  taste  and  make 
it  of  some  use.  The  day  is  light  and  the  past 
is  dark;  all  eyes  can  see  the  day  and  find  it 
splendid,  but  eyes  that  would  pierce  the  dark- 
ness of  the  past  must  grow  familiar  with 
lighter  mists;  to  every  man  the  life  of  the 
world  about  him  is  that  man's  youth,  while 
old  age  is  ill  to  apprehend. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

PREFATORY  NOTE v 

A  DECEPTIVE  DEDICATION  vii 

I    LITANY  OF  THE  NOVELIST  i 

II    WHO  is  THE  MAN? 44 

III  THREE  YOUNG  NOVELISTS       ....  74 

1  D.  H.  LAWRENCE 

2  AMBER  REEVES 

3  SHEILA  KAYE-SMITH 

IV  FORM  AND  THE  NOVEL 104 

V    SINCERITY  :  THE  PUBLISHER  AND  THE  POLICE- 
MAN       in 

VI    THREE  Come  GIANTS 136 

1  TARTARTN 

2  FALSTAFF 

3  MUNCHAUSEN 

VII    THE  ESPERANTO  OF  ART         .        .       .        .183 
VIII    THE  TWILIGHT  OF  GENIUS      .        .       .        .201 


XXXlll 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 

i 

LITANY  OF  THE  NOVELIST 


THERE  are  times  when  one  wearies  of  litera- 
ture; when  one  reads  over  one's  first  book, 
reflects  how  good  it  was,  and  how  greatly  one 
was  misunderstood;  when  one  considers  the 
perils  and  misadventures  of  so  accidental  a  life 
and  likens  one's  self  to  those  dogs  described  by 
Pliny  who  run  fast  as  they  drink  from  the  Nile 
for  fear  they  should  be  seized  by  the  croco- 
diles ;  when  one  tires  of  following  Mr.  Ford 
Madox  Hueffer's  advice,  "to  sit  down  in  the 
back  garden  with  pen,  ink  and  paper,  to  put 
vine  leaves  in  one's  hair  and  to  write" ;  when 
one  remembers  that  in  Flaubert's  view  the  liter- 
ary man's  was  a  dog's  life  (metaphors  about 

i 


LITERARY   CHAPTERS 


authors  lead  you  back  to  the  dog)  but  that  none 
other  was  worth  living.  In  those  moods,  one 
does  not  agree  with  Flaubert;  rather,  one 
agrees  with  Butler : 

"...  those  that  write  in  rhyme  still  make 
The  one  verse  for  the  other's  sake ; 
For  one  for  sense  and  one  for  rhyme, 
I  think's  sufficient  at  one  time." 

One  sees  life  like  Mr.  Polly,  as  "a  rotten, 
beastly  thing."  One  sighs  for  adventure,  to 
become  a  tramp  or  a  trust  magnate.  One 
knows  that  one  will  never  be  so  popular!  as 
Armour's  Meat  Extract;  thence  is  but  a  step 
to  picture  one's  self  as  less  worthy. 

We  novelists  are  the  showmen  of  life.  We 
hold  up  its  mirror,  and,  if  it  look  at  us  at  all, 
it  mostly  makes  faces  at  us.  Indeed  a  writer 
might  with  impunity  have  sliced  Medusa's 
head :  she  would  never  have  noticed  him. 
The  truth  is  that  the  novelist  is  a  despised 
creature.  At  moments,  when,  say,  a  learned 
professor  has  devoted  five  columns  to  showing 
that  a  particular  novelist  is  one  of  the  pests 
of  society,  the  writer  feels  exalted.  But  as 


LITANY  OF  THE  NOVELIST 

society  shows  no  signs  of  wanting  to  be  rid  of 
the  pest,  the  novelist  begins  to  doubt  his  own 
pestilency.  He  is  wrong.  In  a  way,  society 
knows  of  our  existence,  but  does  not  worry; 
it  shows  this  in  a  curiously  large  number  of 
ways,  more  than  can  be  enumerated  here.  It 
sees  the  novelist  as  a  man  apart ;  as  a  creature 
fraught  with  venom,  and,  paradoxically,  a 
creature  of  singularly  lamblike  and  unpractical 
temperament. 

Consider,  indeed,  the  painful  position  of  a 
respectable  family  whose  sons  make  for  Wall 
Street  every  day,  its  daughters  for  Fifth  Avenue 
and  fashion,  or  for  East  Side  good  works  and 
social  advancement.  Imagine  that  family,  who 
enjoys  a  steady  income,  shall  we  say  in  the 
neighbourhood  of  fifty  thousand  dollars  a  year, 
enough  to  keep  it  in  modest  comfort,  confronted 
with  the  sudden  infatuation  of  one  of  its  daugh- 
ters for  an  unnamed  person,  met  presumably 
on  East  Side  where  he  was  collecting  copy. 
You  can  imagine  the  conversation  after  dinner : 

Sadie:  "What  does  he  do,  Popper?  Oh, 
well !  he's  a  novelist." 

3 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


Popper :  "  .  .  .  What !  a  novelist !  One  of 
those  long-haired,  sloppy-collared  ragamuffins 
without  any  soles  to  their  boots !  Do  you 
think  that  because  I've  given  you  an  automo- 
bile I'm  going  to  treat  you  to  a  husband? 
A  saloon  loafer !  (we  are  always  intemperate) 
a  man  whom  your  mothers  and  sisters  —  (our 
morals  are  atrocious)  —  I  should  not  wonder 
if  the  police  —  (we  are  all  dishonest,  and  yet 
we  never  have  any  money)  —  I  was  talking 
to  the  Bishop  —  (we  practise  no  religion,  ex- 
cept that  occasionally  we  are  Mormons)." 

And  so  on,  and  so  on.  Popper  won't  have 
it,  and  if  in  the  end  Popper  does  have  it  (which 
he  generally  does  when  Sadie  has  made  up 
her  mind),  he  finds  that  Sadie's  eyes  are  not 
blacked,  but  that  Sadie's  husband's  boots  are 
blacked,  that  the  wretched  fellow  keeps  a 
balance  at  the  bank,  can  ride  a  horse,  push  a 
perambulator,  drive  a  nail,  but  he  does  not 
believe  it  for  a  long  time.  For  it  is,  if  not 
against  all  experience,  at  any  rate  against  all 
theory  that  a  novelist  should  be  eligible.  The 
bank  clerk  is  eligible,  the  novelist  is  not;  we 

4 


LITANY  OF   THE   NOVELIST 

are  not  "safe",  we  are  adventurers,  we  have 
theories,  and  sometimes  the  audacity  to  live 
up  to  them.  We  are  often  poor,  which  happens 
to  other  men,  and  this  is  always  our  own  fault, 
while  it  is  often  their  misfortune.  Of  late 
years,  we  have  grown  still  more  respectable 
than  our  forefathers,  who  were  painfully  such : 
Dickens  lived  comfortably  in  Marylebone; 
Thackeray  reigned  in  a  luxurious  house  near 
Kensington  Square  and  in  several  first-class 
clubs ;  Walter  Scott  reached  a  terrible  extreme 
of  respectability ;  he  went  bankrupt,  but  later 
on  paid  his  debts  in  full.  Yet  wTe  never  seem 
quite  respectable,  perhaps  because  respecta- 
bility is  so  thin  a  varnish.  Even  the  unfor- 
tunate girls  whom  we  "entice  away  from  good 
homes"  into  the.  squalor  of  the  arts,  do  not 
think  us  respectable.  For  them  half  the  thrill 
of  marrying  a  novelist  consists  in  the  horror 
of  the  family  which  must  receive  him;  it  is 
like  marrying  a  quicksand,  and  the  idea  is  so 
bitter  that  a  novelist  who  wears  his  hair  long 
might  do  well  to  marry  a  girl  who  wears  hers 
short.  He  will  not  find  her  in  the  bourgeoisie. 

5 


LITERARY   CHAPTERS 


The  novelist  is  despised  because  he  produces 
a  commodity  not  recognised  as  "useful." 
There  is  no  definition  of  usefulness,  yet  every- 
body is  clear  that  the  butcher,  the  car  attend- 
ant, the  stock  jobber  are  useful ;  that  they  fulfil 
a  function  necessary  for  the  maintenance  of 
the  State.  The  pugilist,  the  dancer,  the 
vaudeville  actor,  the  novelist,  produce  nothing 
material,  while  the  butcher  does.  To  live, 
one  needs  meat,  but  not  novels.  We  need  not 
pursue  this  too  far  and  ask  the  solid  classes  to 
imagine  a  world  without  arts;  presumably 
they  could  not.  It  is  enough  to  point  the 
difference,  and  to  suggest  that  we  are  deeply 
enthralled  by  the  Puritan  tradition  which  calls 
pleasure,  if  not  noxious,  at  any  rate  unim- 
portant; the  maintenance  of  life  is  looked 
upon  as  more  essential  than  the  enjoyment 
thereof,  so  that  many  people  picture  an  ideal 
world  as  a  spreading  cornfield  dotted  with 
cities  that  pay  good  rents,  connected  by  rail- 
roads which  pay  good  dividends.  They  re- 
semble the  revolutionary,  who  on  the  steps  of 
the  guillotine  said  to  Lavoisier:  "La  Republi- 

6 


LITANY  OF  THE   NOVELIST 

que  rid  pas  besoin  de  savanta"  This  is  obvious 
when  the  average  man  (which  includes  many 
women)  alludes  to  the  personality  of  some  well- 
known  writer.  One  he  has  come  to  respect : 
Mr.  Hall  Caine,  because  popular  report  says 
that  his  latest  novel  brought  him  in  about  half 
a  million  dollars,  but  those  such  as  Mr.  Arnold 
Bennett  and  Mr.  H.  G.  Wells  leave  strange 
shadows  upon  his  memory.  Of  Mr.  Bennett 
he  says:  "Oh,  yes,  he  writes  about  the  North 
Country,  doesn't  he?  Or  is  it  the  West  Coun- 
try? Tried  one  of  his  books  once.  I  forget 
its  name,  and  now  I  come  to  think  of  it,  it 
may  have  been  by  somebody  else.  He  must 
be  a  dreary  sort  of  chap,  anyhow;  sort  of 
Methodist." 

Mr.  H.  G.  Wells  is  more  clearly  pictured: 
"Wells?  the  fellow  who  writes  about  flying 
machines  and  men  in  the  moon.  Jules  Verne 
sort  of  stuff,  isn't  it?  He's  a  Socialist." 

And  so  out  with  Mr.  Bennett,  one  of  our  best 
modern  stylists,  who  in  spite  of  an  occasional 
crowding  of  the  canvas  has  somehow  fixed  for 
us  the  singular  and  ferocious  tribe  from  which 

7 


LITERARY   CHAPTERS 


he  springs;  so  out  with  Mr.  Wells,  with  his 
restless,  impulsive,  combative,  infinitely  auda- 
cious mind.  The  average  man  says  "Flying 
machines",  and  the  passion  of  Mr.  Wells  for  a 
beautiful,  if  somewhat  over-hygienic  world  is 
swept  away.  Those  are  leading  instances. 
Others,  such  as  Mr.  Conrad,  Miss  Edith  Whar- 
ton,  O.  Henry,  Mr.  Galsworthy,  are  not  men- 
tioned at  all;  if  the  name  of  Mr.  Henry 
James  is  spoken,  it  leads  up  to  a  gibe  at  long 
sentences. 

The  attitude  is  simple;  we  are  not  taken 
seriously.  Novelists  have  to  take  mankind 
seriously  because  they  want  to  understand  it; 
mankind  is  exempt  from  the  obligation  because 
it  does  not  conceive  the  desire.  We  are  not 
people  who  take  degrees,  who  can  be  scheduled 
and  classified.  We  are  not  Doctors  of  Science, 
Licentiates  of  Music  Schools.  We  are  just 
men  and  women  of  some  slight  independence, 
therefore  criminals,  men  who  want  to  observe 
and  not  men  who  want  to  do,  therefore  in- 
credible. And  so,  because  we  cannot  fall  into 
the  classes  made  for  those  who  can  be  classified, 

8 


LITANY  OF  THE   NOVELIST 

we  are  outside  class,  below  class.  We  are  the 
mistletoe  on  the  social  oak. 

It  is  perhaps  in  search  of  dignity  and  status 
that  the  modern  novelist  has  taken  to  journal- 
ism. Journalism  raises  a  novelist's  status,  for 
a  view  expressed  by  a  fictitious  character  is  not 
taken  seriously,  while  the  same  view  fastened 
to  an  event  of  the  day  acquires  importance, 
satisfies  the  specific  function  of  the  press, 
which  is  more  and  more  that  of  a  champion  of 
-  found  causes.  The  newspaper  is  a  better 
jumping-off  ground  than  the  pulpit  or  the  pro- 
fessorial chair;  it  enjoys  a  vast  circulation, 
which  the  novel  does  not ;  it  conveys  an  idea 
to  millions  of  people  who  would  never  think  of 
buying  a  newspaper  for  the  sake  of  an  idea, 
but  who  buy  it  for  news,  murder  cases,  or 
corn  market  reports;  it  is  a  place  where  a 
writer  may  be  serious,  because  the  newspaper  is 
labelled  as  serious,  while  the  novel  is  labelled  as 
frivolous. 

This  is  vital  to  the  proposition,  and  explains 
why  so  many  novelists  have  sought  refuge  in 
the  press.  It  is  not  exactly  a  question  of  money. 

9 


LITERARY   CHAPTERS 


Journalism  rewards  a  successful  novelist  better 
than  does  the  novel,  though  successful  novelists 
make  very  good  incomes;  they  often  earn  as 
much  as  the  red-nosed  comedian  with  the 
baggy  trousers  and  the  battered  Derby. 
Thackeray,  Washington  Irving,  Kingsley,  and 
notably  Dickens,  knew  the  value  of  journalism. 
Dickens  was  the  most  peculiar  case,  for  it  is 
fairly  clear  that  "Nicholas  Nickleby"  helped 
to  suppress  the  ragged  schools,  and  that 
"Oliver  Twist"  was  instrumental  in  reforming 
workhouse  law;  both  works  were  immensely 
successful,  but  Dickens  felt  that  he  wanted  a 
platform  where  he  could  be  always  wholly 
serious :  for  this  the  Daily  News  was  born  in 
1846.  Likewise  Mr.  Wells  has  written  enor- 
mously upon  the  war  and  economics;  Mr. 
Arnold  Bennett  has  printed  many  political 
articles;  Mr.  Galsworthy  has  become  more 
direct  than  a  novelist  can  be  and  written 
largely  on  Cruelty  to  Animals,  Prison  Reform, 
etc.  It  is  the  only  way  in  which  we  can  be 
taken  seriously.  We  must  be  solemn,  a  little 
dull,  patriotic  or  unpatriotic,  socialistic  or  con- 
•  10 


LITANY  OF  THE  NOVELIST 

servative ;  there  is  only  one  thing  we  may  not 
be,  and  that  is  creative  and  emotional. 

It  should  be  said  in  passing  that  even  the 
press  does  not  think  much  of  us.  Articles  on 
solid  subjects  by  novelists  are  printed,  well 
paid  for,  sought  after ;  it  does  a  paper  good  to 
have  an  article  on  Demon  Finance  by  Mr. 
Dreiser,  or  on  Feminism  by  Mr.  Zangwill. 
The  novelist  amounts  to  a  poster;  he  is  a 
blatant  advertisement;  he  is  a  curiosity,  the 
man  who  makes  the  public  say:  "I  wonder 
what  the  Daily  —  is  up  to  now."  Be  assured 
that  Mr.  Zangwill's  views  on  Feminism  do  not 
command  the  respectful  treatment  that  is 
accorded  a  column  leader  in  the  Times;  he  is 
too  human ;  he  sparkles  too  much ;  he  has  not 
the  matchless  quality  of  those  leaders  which 
compels  you  to  put  on  an  extra  stamp  if  you 
have  to  send  the  paper  through  the  post. 

The  newspapers  court  the  novelist  as  the 
people  of  a  small  town  court  the  local  rich  man, 
but  neither  newspaper  nor  little  town  likes  very 
much  the  object  of  its  courtship.  Except  when 
they  pay  us  to  express  them,  the  newspapers 

ii 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


resent  our  having  any  views  at  all ;  the  thought 
behind  is  always :  "Why  can't  the  fellows  mind 
their  own  business,  and  go  on  writing  about 
love  and  all  that  sort  of  stuff?"  During  the 
war,  references  to  novelists  who  express  their 
views  have  invariably  been  sneering;  it  is 
assumed  that  because  we  are  novelists  we  are 
unable  to  comprehend  tactics,  politics,  in  fact 
any  "ics"  except  perhaps  the  entirely  unim- 
portant aesthetics.  But  the  peculiarity  of  the 
situation  is  that  not  a  voice  has  been  raised 
against  professors  of  philology,  who  write  on 
finance,  against  bishops  dealing  with  land 
settlement,  against  doctors  when  they  re-map 
Europe,  against  barristers,  business  men. 
These  may  say  anything  they  like;  they  are 
plain,  hard-headed  men,  while  our  heads  are 
soft  enough  to  admit  a  new  idea. 

To  define  the  attitude  of  the  press  is  in 
modern  times  to  define  the  attitude  of  the 
State.  From  our  point  of  view  this  is  frigid. 
In  America,  there  are  no  means  of  gauging  a 
novelist's  position,  for  your  classification  rests 
upon  breeding,  celebrity,  and  fortune.  Ours 

12 


LITANY  OF  THE  NOVELIST 


rests  upon  breeding  and  reliability.  You  are 
more  adventurous  than  we.  Britannia  rides 
in  a  chariot,  while  your  national  emblem  fore- 
shadowed the  aeroplane.  And  so,  in  America, 
it  may  profit  a  man  as  well  to  be  a  Jack  London 
as  an  Elihu  Root.  You  have  no  means  of 
recognising  status,  while  in  England  we  have 
honours.  We  distribute  a  great  many 
honours,  and  indeed  the  time  may  come,  as 
Mr.  Max  Beerbohm  says,  when  everybody  will 
be  sentenced  to  a  knighthood  without  the 
option  of  a  fine.  Honours  are  rather  foolish 
things,  monuments  that  create  a  need  for  cir- 
cumspection ;  they  are  often  given  for  merits 
not  easily  perceived,  but  still  they  are  a  rough 
test  of  status.  Setting  aside  money,  which  is 
the  primary  qualification  and  justifies  Racine 
in  saying  that  without  money  honour  is  noth- 
ing but  a  disease,  a  title  is  a  fairly  clear  sign  of 
distinction.  Sir  Edward  Shackleton,  Sir  Doug- 
las Haig,  Sir  Frederick  Treves,  Lord  Reading, 
Sir  William  Crookes,  Lord  Lister,  all  those 
titles  are  obvious  recognitions  of  prominence  in 
Polar  Exploration,  the  Army,  the  Law,  Medi- 

13 


LITERARY   CHAPTERS 


cine,  Research,  as  the  case  may  be;  there  are 
scores  of  Medical  Knights,  many  Law  Lords, 
many  Major  Generals  and  Admirals  endowed 
with  the  Knight  Commandership  of  the  Bath. 
We  do  not  complain.  They  deserve  their 
honours,  most  of  them.  They  deserve  them 
more  than  the  politicians  who  have  received 
for  long  service  rewards  that  ability  could  not 
give  them,  than  the  Lord  Mayors  who  are 
titled  because  they  sold,  for  instance,  large 
quantities  of  kitchen  fenders.  When  we  con- 
sider the  arts,  we  observe  a  discrepancy.  The 
arts  do  not  ask  for  honours ;  they  are  too  arro- 
gant, and  know  that  born  knights  cannot  be 
knighted.  Only  they  claim  that  an  attempt 
should  be  made  to  honour  them,  to  grant  them 
Mr.  Gladstone's  and  Mr.  Chamberlain's  priv- 
ilege of  refusing  honours. 

Consider,  for  instance,  the  Order  of  Merit, 
one  of  the  highest  honours  that  the  British 
Crown  can  confer.  At  the  end  of  last  year  it 
numbered  twenty-one  members.  Among  them 
were  some  distinguished  foreigners,  Prince 
Oyama,  Prince  Yamagata  and  Admiral  Togo ; 

14 


LITANY  OF  THE  NOVELIST 


historians,  pro-consuls,  four  admirals  and  one 
novelist,  Mr.  Thomas  Hardy.  We  do  not  com- 
plain that  only  Mr.  Thomas  Hardy  was  chosen, 
for  there  is  nobody  else  to  set  at  his  side  .  .  . 
only  we  do  complain  that  in  this  high  order 
four  admirals  find  a  place.  Are  we  then  so 
rich  in  admiralty,  so  poor  in  literature?  The 
same  is  still  truer  when  we  come  to  the  inferior 
orders,  which  are  still  fairly  high,  such  as  the 
Commandership  of  the  Bath.  That  ancient 
order  is  almost  entirely  recruited  from  amongst 
soldiers,  sailors,  politicians,  and  civil  servants ; 
it  does  not  hold  the  name  of  a  single  novelist. 
No  novelist  is  a  Privy  Councillor,  though  the 
position  is  honorific  and  demands  no  special 
knowledge.  On  the  Privy  Council  you  find 
labour  members  of  Parliament,  barristers,  coal 
owners,  sellers  of  chemicals  and  other  commod- 
ities, but  no  novelists.  In  all  the  other  orders 
it  is  the  same  thing;  for . novelists  there  are 
neither  Commanderships  of  the  Bath,  nor  of 
the  Victorian  Order,  nor  of  St.  Michael  and 
St.  George,  no  honours  great  or  minor;  no 
man  has  ever  in  England  been  offered  a  peerage 

15 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


because  he  wrote  novels ;  and  yet  he  has  been 
offered  a  peerage  because  he  sold  beer.  George 
Meredith  was  not  offered  a  peerage,  even  though 
some  think  that  his  name  will  live  when  those 
of  captains  and  kings  have  melted  into  dust. 
Our  little  band  of  recognised  men  such  as  Sir 
James  Barrie,  Sir  Rider  Haggard,  Sir  Arthur 
Conan  Doyle,  small  is  the  toll  they  have  taken 
of  public  recognition ;  perhaps  they  should  not 
expect  it ;  perhaps  they  have  been  recognised 
only  because  of  certain  political  activities ;  but 
must  we  really  believe  that  so  many  lawyers 
and  so  few  writers  are  worthy  of  an  accolade? 
Is  the  novelist  worthless  until  he  is  dead? 

This  picture  may  seem  too  black,  and,  in- 
deed, it  is  mainly  that  of  Great  Britain  where 
contempt  for  literature  has  risen  to  a  peculiar 
degree,  but  even  in  your  country  it  applies. 
Make  an  imaginative  effort ;  see  yourself  in 
the  reception  room  of  some  rich  man  in  New 
York,  where  a  "crush"  of  celebrities  is  taking 
place.  A  flunkey  at  the  head  of  the  stairs  an- 
nounces the  guests.  He  announces:  "Mr. 
Charles  E.  Hughes !  —  Mr.  W.  D.  Howells !  - 

16 


LITANY  OF  THE  NOVELIST 


The  Bishop  of  Oklahoma ! "  Who  caused  a 
swirl  in  the  "gilded  throng"?  The  notable 
cleric?  The  candidate  for  the  Presidential 
Chair?  Or  your  premier  novelist?  Be  honest 
in  your  reply,  and  you  will  know  who,  at  that 
hypothetical  reception,  created  a  stir.  The 
stir,  according  to  place  or  period,  greeted  the 
politician  or  the  bishop,  and  only  in  purely 
literary  circles  would  Mr.  Howells  have  been 
preferred.  For  the  worship  of  crowds  goes  to 
power  rather  than  to  distinction,  to  the  recog- 
nised functionary  of  the  State,  to  him  whose 
power  can  give  power,  to  all  the  evanescent 
things,  and  seldom  to  those  stockish  things, 
the  milestones  on  the  road  to  eternity.  The 
attitude  of  the  crowd  is  the  attitude  of  the 
State,  for  the  State  is  only  the  crowd,  and  often 
just  the  mob ;  it  is  the  chamberlain  of  ochloc- 
racy, the  leader  who  follows.  In  all  times, 
the  State  has  shown  its  indifference,  its  con- 
tempt, for  the  arts  and  particularly  for  litera- 
ture. Now  and  then  a  prince,  such  as  Louis  of 
Bavaria,  Philip  of  Spain,  Lorenzo  the  Magnifi- 
cent, has  given  to  literature  more  than  respect. 

17 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


He  has  given  love,  but  that  only  because  he 
was  a  man  before  a  prince.  The  prince  must 
prefer  the  lawyer,  the  politician,  the  general, 
and  indeed,  of  late  years  what  prince  was  found 
to  patron  George  Meredith  or  Henry  James  ? 

The  attitude  of  the  State  to  the  novelist 
defines  itself  most  clearly  when  a  royal  com- 
mission is  appointed.  In  England,  royal  com- 
missions are  ad  hoc  bodies  appointed  by  the 
government  from  among  men  of  political  in- 
fluence and  special  knowledge,  to  investigate  a 
special  question. 

As  a  rule  they  are  well  composed.  For  in- 
stance, a  royal  commission  on  water  supply 
would  probably  comprise  two  or  three  members 
of  Parliament  of  some  standing,  the  President 
of  the  Institute  of  Civil  Engineers,  a  professor 
of  sanitation,  a  canal  expert,  one  or  two  trade- 
unionists,  one  or  two  manufacturers,  and  a  rep- 
resentative of  the  Home  Office  or  the  Board  of 
Trade.  Any  man  of  position  who  has  shown 
interest  in  public  affairs  may  be  asked  to  sit  on 
a  royal  commission  —  provided  he  is  not  a 
novelist.  Only  one  novelist  has  attained  so 

18 


LITANY  OF  THE  NOVELIST 


giddy  a  height :  Sir  Rider  Haggard ;  how  it 
happened  is  not  known :  it  must  have  been  a 
mistake.  We  are  not  weighty  enough,  serious 
enough  to  be  called  on,  even  if  our  novels  are 
so  weighty  and  so  serious  that  hardly  anybody 
can  read  them.  We  are  a  gay  tribe  of  Ariels,  too 
light  to  discuss  even  our  own  trade.  For  royal 
commissions  concern  themselves  with  our  trade, 
with  copyright  law,  with  the  restriction  of  the 
paper  supply.  You  might  think  that,  for  in- 
stance, paper  supply  concerned  us,  for  we  use 
cruel  quantities,  yet  no  recognised  author  sat 
on  the  commission ;  a  publisher  was  the  nearest 
approach.  Apparently  there  were  two  great 
consumers  of  paper,  authors  and  grocers,  but 
alone  the  grocers  were  consulted.  What  is  the 
matter  with  us?  Is  our  crime  that  we  put 
down  in  indecent  ink  what  we  think  and  feel, 
while  other  people  think  and  feel  the  same, 
but  prudently  keep  it  down?  Possibly  our 
crimes  are  our  imagination  and  our  tendency 
to  carry  this  imagination  into  action.  Bis- 
marck said  that  a  State  conducted  on  the  lines 
of  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  would  not  last 

19 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


twenty-four  hours ;  perhaps  it  is  thought  that  a 
State  in  the  conduct  of  which  a  novelist  had  a 
share  would  immediately  resolve  itself  into  a 
problem  play.  Something  like  that,  though  in 
fact  it  is  unlikely  that  Ariel  come  to  judgment 
would  be  much  more  fanciful  in  his  decrees 
than  the  historic  Solomon. 

All  this  because  we  lack  solidity  —  and  yet 
the  public  calls  us  commercial,  self-advertisers, 
money-grubbers.  It  is  thought  base  that  we 
should  want  three  meals  a  day,  though  nobody 
suggests  that  we  can  hope  to  find  manna  in  the 
street,  or  drink  in  our  parks  from  the  fountain 
Hippocrene.  We  are  told  that  we  make  our 
contracts  too  keenly,  that  we  are  grasping,  that 
we  are  not  straight  —  and  yet  we  are  told  that 
we  are  not  business  men.  What  are  we  to  do  ? 
Shall  we  form  a  trade-union  and  establish  a 
piece  rate?  Shall  we  sell  our  novels  by  the 
yard?  May  we  not  be  as  commercial  and  re- 
spected as  the  doctor  who  heals  with  words 
and  the  lawyer  who  strangles  with  tape? 

Now  and  then  the  defences  of  society  and 
state  are  breached,  and  a  novelist  enters 

20 


LITANY  OF  THE  NOVELIST 

Parliament.  Mr.  Hilaire  Belloc,  Mr.  A.  E. 
W.  Mason,  followed  Disraeli  into  the  House  of 
Commons,  but  it  is  very  extraordinary.  No  one 
knows  how  these  gentlemen  managed  to  con- 
vince the  electors  that  with  their  eye  "in  fine 
frenzy  rolling"  they  would  not  scandalise  their 
party  by  voting  against  it.  (Those  writing 
chaps,  you  know,  they  aren't  safe !) 

It  must  be  said  that  in  Parliament  the  novel- 
ists did  not  have  a  very  good  time ;  they  were 
lucky  in  having  been  preferred  to  a  landowner 
or  a  pawnbroker,  but  once  in  they  had  not  the 
slightest  chance  of  being  preferred  to  those 
estimable  members  of  society.  It  was  not  a 
question  of  straight  votes;  it  never  came  to 
that,  for  Mr.  Belloc  soon  disagreed  with  both 
sides  and  became  a  party  of  one,  while  Mr. 
A.  E.  W.  Mason  as  a  rushlight  flickered  his 
little  flicker  and  went  out.  It  is  as  well ;  they 
would  never  have  been  taken  seriously.  It  is 
almost  a  tradition  that  they  should  not  be 
taken  seriously,  and  it  is  on  record  in  most  of 
the  worldly  memoirs  of  the  nineteenth  century 
that  the  two  main  objections  to  Disraeli  were 

21 


his  waistcoats  and  his  authorship  of  "  Contarini 
Fleming."  Nero  liked  to  see  people  burnt 
alive ;  Disraeli  wrote  novels.  Weaknesses  are 
found  in  all  great  men. 

There  seems  in  this  to  lie  error  as  well  as 
scandal;  when  a  new  organisation  is  created, 
say  for  the  control  of  lamp  oil,  obviously  a 
novelist  should  not  be  made  its  chairman,  but 
why  should  a  blotting-paper  merchant  be  pre- 
ferred? Indeed,  one  might  side  with  Mr. 
Zangwill,  who  demands  representation  for 
authors  in  the  Cabinet  itself,  on  the  plea  that 
they  would  introduce  the  emotion  which  is 
necessary  if  the  Cabinet  is  to  manage  impulsive 
mankind.  As  he  finely  says,  we  are  professors 
of  human  nature ;  if  only  some  University 
would  give  us  a  title  and  some  initials  to  follow 
our  name,  say  P.H.N.,  people  might  believe 
that  we  knew  something  of  it.  But  the  atti- 
tude of  the  State  in  these  matters  is  steadfast 
enough.  It  recognises  us  as  servants  rather 
than  as  citizens ;  if  in  our  later  years  we  come 
upon  hard  times,  we  can  be  given,  through  the 
Civil  List,  pensions  which  rescue  us  from  the 

22 


LITANY  OF  THE  NOVELIST 

indignities  of  the  poor  house,  but  no  more. 
Mostly  these  pensions  benefit  our  heirs,  but 
the  offering  is  so  small  that  it  shocks ;  it  is  like 
tipping  an  ex-President.  Thus  Mr.  W.  B. 
Yeats  enjoys  a  pension  of  seven  hundred  fifty 
dollars,  Mr.  Joseph  Conrad,  of  five  hundred 
fifty  dollars.  Why  give  us  pensions  at  all  if 
they  must  be  alms?  One  cannot  be  dignified 
on  five  hundred  dollars  a  year;  one  can  be 
dignified  on  twenty-five  thousand  dollars  a 
year,  because  the  world  soon  forgets  that  you 
ride  a  gift  horse  if  that  horse  is  a  fine,  fat  beast. 
The  evidence  is  to  be  found  in  the  retiring  pen- 
sions of  our  late  Lord  Chancellors  who  receive 
twenty-five  thousand  dollars  a  year;  of  our 
Judges,  five  thousand  to  eighteen  thousand 
seven  hundred  fifty  dollars ;  in  the  allowances 
made  to  impoverished  politicians,  which  attain 
ten  thousand  dollars.  Out  of  a  total  of  sixteen 
hundred  thousand  dollars  met  by  our  Civil  List, 
literature,  painting,  science,  research,  divide 
every  year,  six  thousand  dollars.  Nor  do  the 
immediate  rewards  show  greater  equality.  Lord 
Roberts  was  voted  half  a  million  dollars  for  his 

23 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


services  in  South  Africa ;  Mr.  Thomas  Hardy 
has  not  yet  been  voted  anything  for  "The 
Dynasts."  I  expect  that  America  is  just  as 
duU. 

The  shame  of  literature  is  carried  on  even 
into  following  generations.  The  present  Lord 
Nelson,  who  is  not  a  poor  man,  for  he  owns 
seven  thousand  acres  of  land,  is  still  drawing  a 
pension  of  twenty-five  thousand  dollars  a  year, 
earned  by  his  august  ancestor,  but  the  daughter 
of  Leigh  Hunt  must  be  content  with  two  hun- 
dred and  fifty  dollars.  We  are  unknown.  We 
are  nobody;  Rouget  de  1'Isle,  author  of  "La 
Marseillaise  ",  gave  wings  to  the  revolutionary 
chariot,  but  tiny,  bilious,  tyrannic  Robespierre 
rode  in  it,  and  rides  in  it  to-day  through  the 
pages  of  history,  while  men  go  to  their  death 
singing  the  words  of  Rouget  de  1'Isle  and  know 
him  not. 

Even  in  our  own  profession  of  authorship  the 
novelist  is  an  object  of  disdain.  We  are  less 
than  the  economists,  the  historians,  the  politi- 
cal writers :  we  amuse  while  they  teach ;  they 
bore,  and  as  they  bore  it  is  assumed  that  they 

24 


LITANY  OF  THE  NOVELIST 

educate,  dulness  always  having  been  the  sorry 
companion  of  education.  Evidence  is  easily 
found ;  there  exists  a  useful,  short  encyclopaedia 
called  "Books  that  Count."  It  contains  the 
names  of  about  four  thousand  authors,  out  of 
whom  only  sixty-three  are  novelists.  Divines 
whose  sermons  do  not  fetch  five  cents  at  the 
second-hand  bookseller's,  promoters  of  economic 
theories  long  disproved,  partisan  historians, 
mendacious  travellers  —  they  crowd  out  of  the 
" books  that  count"  the  pale  sixty- three  novel- 
ists, all  that  is  left  of  the  large  assembly  that 
gave  us  "Tom  Jones"  and  "The  Way  of  All 
Flesh."  This  attitude  we  observe  in  most  refer- 
ence books.  We  observe  it,  for  instance,  in  the 
well-known  "  Who's  Who  Year  Book  ",  which, 
amazing  as  it  seems,  contains  no  list  of  authors. 
The  book  contains  a  list  of  professors,  includ- 
ing dental  surgery,  a  list  of  past  presidents  of 
the  Oxford  Union,  a  list  of  owners  of  Derby 
winners,  but  not  a  list  of  authors.  The  editors 
of  this  popular  reference  book  know  what  the 
public  wants;  apparently  the  public  wants  to 
know  that  Mr.  Arthur  H.  King  is  General 

25 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


Manager  of  the  Commercial  Bank  of  London 
Ltd.,  but  the  public  does  not  want  to  know 
that  Mr.  Anatole  France  is  a  great  man.  The 
only  evidence  of  notice  is  a  list  of  our  pseu- 
donyms. It  matters  that  Mr.  Richard  Le 
Gallienne  should  write  under  the  name  of 
"Logroller",  for  that  is  odd.  Mr.  Le  Gallienne 
being  an  author,  is  a  curiosity;  it  matters  to 
nobody  that  he  is  a  man. 

2 

What  is  the  area  of  a  novelist's  reputation  ? 
How  far  do  the  ripples  extend  when  he  casts  a 
novel  into  the  whirlpool  of  life?  It  is  difficult 
to  say,  but  few  novelists  were  ever  so  well 
known  to  the  people  as  were  in  their  time  such 
minor  figures  as  Rockefeller  or  Dingley,  nor  is 
there  a  novelist  to-day  whose  fame  can  vie 
with  that  of,  say,  Mr.  Roosevelt.  It  is  strange 
to  think  that  Dickens  himself  could  not  in  his 
own  day  create  as  much  stir  as  such  obscure 
personages  as  Captain  Waddell,  Peabody,  or 
President  Johnson.  He  lacked  political  flavour ; 
he  was  merely  one  of  the  latter-day  prophets 

26 


LITANY  OF  THE  NOVELIST 

who  lack  the  unique  advertisement  of  being 
stoned.  It  will  be  said  that  such  an  instance 
is  taken  from  the  masses  of  the  world,  most  of 
whom  do  not  read  novels,  while  all  are  affected 
by  the  politician,  but  in  those  circles  that  sup- 
port literature  the  same  phenomenon  appears; 
the  novel  may  be  known ;  the  novelist  is  not. 
The  novel  is  not  respected  and,  indeed,  one 
often  hears  a  woman,  at  a  big  lending  library, 
ask  for  "three  of  the  latest  novels."  New 
novels !  Why  not  new  potatoes  ?  She  takes 
the  books  away  calmly,  without  looking  at  the 
titles  or  the  names.  She  is  quite  satisfied; 
sometimes  she  does  not  care  very  much  whether 
or  not  she  has  read  those  novels  before,  for  she 
does  not  remember  them.  They  go  in  at  one 
ear  and  come  out  at  the  other,  presumably,  as  a 
judge  said,  because  there  is  nothing  to  stop 
them. 

It  is  undeniable  that  the  great  mass  of  readers 
forgets  either  names  or  titles ;  many  forget 
both.  Some  of  the  more  educated  remember 
the  author  and  ask  their  library  for  "some- 
thing by  Sydnor  Harrison,"  because  he  writes 

27 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


such  sweet,  pretty  books,  a  definition  where 
slander  blends  subtly  with  veracity.  But,  in 
most  cases,  nothing  remains  of  either  author  or 
title  except  a  hazy  impression ;  the  reader  is 
not  quite  sure  whether  the  book  she  liked  so 
much  is  "Fraternity"  or  the  "Corsican 
Brothers."  She  will  know  that  it  had  some- 
thing to  do  with  family,  and  that  the  author's 
name  began  with  "G"  -unless  it  was  "S." 
It  cannot  be  otherwise,  so  long  as  novels  are 
read  in  the  way  they  are  read,  that  is  to  say,  if 
they  are  taken  as  drugs.  Generally,  novels  are 
read  to  dull  the  mind,  and  many  succeed,  ruin- 
ing the  chances  of  those  whose  intent  is  not 
morphean,  which  fulfil  the  true  function  of  art, 
viz.,  to  inflame.  The  object  of  a  novel  is  not 
to  send  the  reader  to  sleep,  not  to  make  him 
oblivious  of  time  on  a  railway  journey ;  it  is 
not  to  be  propped  up  against  a  cruet  and  con- 
sumed between  the  chop  and  the  pudding;  it 
is  meant  to  show  character,  to  stimulate  obser- 
vation, to  make  life  vivid,  and  as  life  is  most 
vivid  when  it  is  most  unpleasant,  the  novel 
that  is  worth  reading  is  naturally  set  aside. 

28 


LITANY  OF  THE   NOVELIST 


For  such  novels  stir  the  brain  too  much  to  let 
it  go  to  sleep.  Those  novels  are  judged  in  the 
same  way  as  the  baser  kind,  and  that  is,  per- 
haps, why  the  novel  itself  stands  so  low.  It 
does  stand  low,  at  least  in  England,  for  it  is 
almost  impossible  to  sell  it.  Enquiries  made 
of  publishers  show  that  they  expect  to  sell  to 
the  circulating  libraries  seventy  to  seventy-five 
per  cent,  of  the  copies  printed.  To  sell  to  a  cir- 
culating library  is  not  selling;  it  is  lending  at 
one  remove ;  it  means  that  a  single  copy  bought 
by  a  library  is  read  by  anything  between 
twenty  and  a  hundred  people.  Sometimes  it  is 
read  by  more,  for  a  copy  bought  by  Mudie's  is 
sold  off  when  the  subscribers  no  longer  ask  for 
it.  It  goes  to  a  town  of  the  size  of,  say,  Tacoma. 
Discarded  after  a  year  or  so  by  the  subscribers, 
it  may  be  sold  off  for  a  penny  or  twopence, 
with  one  thrown  into  the  dozen  for  luck,  and 
arrive  with  its  cover  hanging  on  in  a  way  that 
is  a  testimonial  to  the  binder,  with  its  pages 
marked  with  thumbs,  stained  with  tears,  or  as 
the  case  may  be,  with  soup,  at  some  small 
stationer's  shop  in  a  little  market  town,  to  go 

29 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


out  on  hire  at  a  penny  a  week,  until  it  no  longer 
holds  together,  and  goes  to  its  eternal  rest  in 
the  pulping  machine.  On  the  way,  nobody 
has  bought  it  except  to  let  it  out,  as  the  padrone 
sends  out  the  pretty  Italian  boys  with  an  organ 
and  a  monkey.  The  public  have  not  bought 
the  book  to  read  and  to  love.  The  twenty-five 
or  thirty  per  cent,  actually  sold  have  been  dis- 
posed of  as  birthday  or  Christmas  presents, 
because  one  has  to  give  something,  and  because 
one  makes  more  effect  with  a  well-bound  book 
for  a  dollar  than  with  two  dollars'  worth  of 
chocolates.  Literature  has  been  given  its 
royalty  on  the  dollar  of  economy.  Yet,  im- 
possible as  the  novel  finds  it  to  tear  its  dollar 
from  the  public,  the  theatre  easily  wheedles  it 
into  paying  five  dollars  or  more  for  two  stalls. 
It  seems  strange  that  two  people  will  pay  five 
dollars  to  see  "Monsieur  Beaucaire"  on  the 
boards,  yet  would  never  dream  of  giving  a  dollar 
for  Mr.  Booth  Tarkington's  book.  That  is 
because  theatre  seats  must  be  paid  for,  while 
books  can  be  borrowed.  It  goes  so  far  that 
novelists  are  continually  asked  "where  one  can 

3° 


LITANY  OF  THE  NOVELIST 

get  their  books",  meaning  "where  they  can  be 
borrowed";  often  they  are  asked  to  lend  a 
copy,  while  no  one  begs  a  ride  from  a  cabman. 
Things  are  not  as  bad  as  that  in  America ;  why 
the  circulating  library  has  not  asserted  itself  in 
your  country  is  difficult  to  say,  for  clotted 
masses  of  population  are  the  atmosphere  in 
which  it  lives.  This  may  arise  from  the  low 
price  of  your  novels;  it  may  be  that  a  large 
proportion  of  your  population  is  not  clotted, 
but  is  so  scattered  that  a  library  could  not 
reach  it ;  it  may  be  that  the  high  quality  of  the 
American  magazine  has  created  a  reading  public. 
Or,  it  may  be  that  you  are  just  barbarians  with 
all  the  generosity  of  the  savage,  and  that  when 
your  civilisation  is  ancient  you  will  acquire  the 
vices  of  ours.  That  is  what  generally  happens 
in  the  course  of  civilisation. 

In  England,  the  public  of  the  novel  is  almost 
exclusively  feminine.  Few  men  read  novels, 
and  a  great  many  nothing  at  all  except  the 
newspaper.  They  say  that  they  are  too  busy, 
which  is  absurd  when  one  reflects  how  busy  is 
the  average  woman.  The  truth  is  that  they 

31 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


are  slack  and  ignorant.  They  have  some  his- 
toric reason  to  despise  the  novel,  for  it  is  quite 
true  that  in  the  nineteenth  century,  with  a  few 
exceptions,  such  as  Thackeray,  Jane  Austen, 
Charlotte  Bronte,  Nathaniel  Hawthorne, 
Dickens,  Scott,  George  Eliot,  the  three-volume 
novel  was  trash.  It  dealt  generally  with  some 
rhetorical  Polish  hero,  a  high-born  English 
maiden,  cruel  parents,  and  Italian  skies.  Right 
up  to  1885  that  sort  of  thing  used  to  arrive  every 
morning  outside  Mudie's  in  a  truck,  but  if  it 
still  arrives  at  Mudie's  in  a  truck  it  should  not 
be  forgotten  that  other  novels  arrive.  That  is 
what  the  men  do  not  know.  If  they  read  at  all, 
you  will  find  them  solemnly  taking  in  "The 
Reminiscences  of  Mr.  Justice  X.  Y.  Z."  or 
"Shooting  Gazelle  in  Bulbulland",  "Political 
Economics",  or  "Economic  Politics"  (it  means 
much  the  same  either  way  up).  All  that  sort 
of  thing,  that  frozen,  dried-up,  elderly  waggish- 
ness,  that  shallow  pomp,  is  mentally  murderous. 
Sometimes  men  do  read  novels,  mostly  detec- 
tive stories,  sporting,  or  very  sentimental  tales. 
When  observed,  they  apologise  and  say  some- 

32 


LITANY  OF  THE   NOVELIST 

thing  about  resting  the  brain.  That  means 
that  they  do  not  respect  the  books  they  read, 
which  is  base ;  it  is  like  keeping  low  company, 
where  one  can  yawn  and  put  one's  boots  on  the 
sofa.  Now,  no  company  is  low  unless  you 
think  it  is.  As  soon  as  you  realise  that  and 
stay,  you  yourself  grow  naturalised  to  it. 
Likewise,  if  you  read  a  book  without  fellowship 
and  respect  for  its  author,  you  are  outraging  it. 
But  mankind  is  stupid,  and  it  would  not 
matter  very  much  that  a  few  men  should  read 
novels  in  that  shamefaced  and  patronising  way 
if  they  were  not  so  open  about  it.  If  they  do 
not  apologise,  they  boast  that  they  never  read 
a  novel;  they  imply  superiority.  Their  femi- 
nine equivalent  is  the  serious-minded  girl,  who 
improves  her  mind  with  a  book  like,  "Vicious 
Viscounts  of  Venice";  if  she  reads  novels  at 
all  she  holds  that  like  good  wine  they  improve 
with  keeping,  and  must  be  at  least  fifty  years 
old.  By  that  time  the  frivolous  author  may 
have  redeemed  his  sins. 

It  is  because  of  all  these  people,  the  people 
who  borrowr  and  do  not  cherish,  the  people  wTho 

33 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


skim,  the  people  who  indulge  and  cringe,  and 
the  people  who  do  not  indulge  at  all,  that  we 
have  come  to  a  corruption  of  literary  taste, 
where  the  idea  is  abashed  before  the  easy 
emotion,  where  religiosity  expels  religion,  and 
the  love  passion  turns  to  heroics  or  to  maunder- 
ing, that  the  success  of  the  second-rate,  of  Mrs. 
Barclay,  of  Mrs.  Gene  Stratton  Porter,  of  Mr. 
Harold  Bell  Wright,  of  Mr.  Hall  Caine,  has 
come  about.  It  is  a  killing  atmosphere.  It  is 
almost  incomprehensible,  for  when  the  talk  is 
of  a  political  proposal,  say  of  land  settlement  in 
the  Northwest,  or  of  a  new  type  of  oil  engine, 
hardly  a  man  will  say :  "I  am  not  interested." 
He  would  be  ashamed  to  say  that.  It  would 
brand  him  as  a  retrograde  person.  Sometimes 
he  will  say :  "I  do  not  like  music,"  but  he  will 
avoid  that  if  he  can,  for  music  is  an  evidence 
of  culture ;  he  will  very  seldom  confess  that  he 
does  not  care  for  pictures ;  he  will  confess 
without  any  hesitation  that  he  does  not  care 
for  any  kind  of  book.  He  will  be  rather  proud 
to  think  that  he  prefers  a  horse  or  a  golf  stick. 
It  will  seldom  occur  to  him  that  this  literature 

34 


LITANY  OF  THE   NOVELIST 


of  which  some  people  talk  so  much  can  hold 
anything  for  him.  It  will  not  even  occur  to 
him  to  try,  for  literature  is  judged  at  Jedburgh. 
It  hardly  ever  occurs  to  any  one  that  literature 
has  its  technique,  that  introductions  to  it  are 
necessary ;  a  man  will  think  it  worth  while  to 
join  a  class  if  he  wants  to  acquire  scientific 
knowledge,  but  seldom  that  anything  in  the 
novel  justifies  his  taking  preliminary  steps.  It 
is  not  that  literature  repels  him  by  its  occasional 
aridity;  it  is  not  that  he  has  stumbled  upon 
classics,  which,  as  Mr.  Arnold  Bennett  delight- 
fully says  "are  not  light  women  who  turn  to 
all  men,  but  gracious  ladies  whom  one  must 
long  woo."  Men  do  not  think  the  lady  worth 
wooing.  This  brings  us  back  to  an  early  con- 
clusion in  this  chapter;  novelists  are  not  use- 
ful: we  are  pleasant,  therefore  despicable. 
Our  novels  do  not  instruct ;  all  they  can  do  is 
to  delight  or  inflame.  We  can  give  a  man  a 
heart,  but  we  cannot  raise  his  bank  interest. 
So  our  novels  are  not  worthy  of  his  respect 
because  they  do  not  come  clad  in  the  staid  and 
reassuring  grey  of  the  textbook;  they  are  not 

35 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


dull  enough  to  gain  the  respect  of  men  who  can 
appreciate  only  the  books  that  bore  them,  who 
shrink  away  from  the  women  who  charm  them 
and  turn  to  those  who  scrag  their  hair  off  their 
forehead,  and  bring  their  noses,  possibly  with 
a  cloth,  to  a  disarming  state  of  brilliancy. 

Sometimes,  when  the  novelist  thinks  of  all 
these  things,  he  is  overcome  by  a  desperate 
mood,  decides  to  give  up  literature,  and  grow 
respectable.  He  thinks  of  becoming  a  grocer, 
or  an  attorney,  and  sometimes  he  wants  to  be 
the  owner  of  a  popular  magazine,  where  he  will 
exercise,  not  the  disreputable  function  of  writ- 
ing, but  the  estimable  one  of  casting  pleasant 
balance  sheets.  Then  the  mood  passes,  and 
he  is  driven  back  to  Flaubert's  view  that  it  is 
a  dog's  life,  but  the  only  one.  He  decides  to 
live  down  the  extraordinary  trash  that  novelists 
produce.  Incredible  as  truth  may  be,  fiction 
is  stranger  still,  and  there  is  no  limit  to  the 
intoxications  of  the  popular  novelist.  Consider, 
indeed,  the  following  account  of  six  novels, 
taken  from  the  reviews  in  the  literary  supple- 
ment of  the  London  Times,  of  July  27,  1916. 

36 


LITANY  OF  THE  NOVELIST 

In  the  first,  "Seventeen",  Mr.  Booth  Tarking- 
ton  depicts  characters  of  an  age  indicated  by 
the  title,  apparently  concerned  with  life  as 
understood  at  seventeen,  who  conduct  baby  talk 
with  dogs.  In  the  second,  "Blow  the  Man 
Down",  by  Mr.  Holman  Day,  an  American 
financier  causes  his  ship  to  run  ashore,  while 
the  captain  is  amorously  pursued  by  the 
daughter  of  the  villainous  financier,  and  cuts 
his  way  out  through  the  bottom  of  a  schooner. 
"The  Plunderers",  by  Mr.  Edwin  Lefevre,  is 
concerned  with  robbers  in  New  York,  whose 
intentions  are  philanthropic;  we  observe  also 
"Wingate's  Wife",  by  Miss  Violet  Tweedale, 
where  the  heroine  suffers  "an  agony  of  appre- 
hension" and  sees  a  man  murdered;  but  all  is 
well,  as  the  victim  happens  to  be  the  husband 
whom  she  had  deserted  twenty  years  before. 
There  is  also  "The  Woman  Who  Lived  Again", 
by  Mr.  Lindsey  Russell,  where  a  Cabinet,  in 
office  when  the  war  breaks  out,  concerns  itself 
with  German  spies  and  an  ancient  Eurasian, 
who  with  Eastern  secrets  revives  a  dead  girl 
and  sends  her  back  to  England  to  confound  the 

37 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


spies .  There  is  also  ' '  B  ecause  It  Was  Written ' ' , 
by  Princess  Radziwill,  where  Russian  and  Bel- 
gian horrors  are  framed  in  between  a  prologue 
and  epilogue  entirely  devoted  to  archangels. 
There  is  nothing  extraordinary  in  these  novels ; 
they  merely  happen  to  be  reviewed  on  the 
same  day.  The  collection  compares  perfectly 
with  another,  in  the  London  Daily  News  of 
September  19,  1916,  where  are  reviewed  a  novel 
by  Miss  C.  M.  Matheson,  one  by  Mr.  Ranger 
Gull,  and  one  by  "Richard  Dehan."  They 
are  the  usual  sort  of  thing.  The  first  is  charac- 
terised by  Mr.  Garnett  as  "a  hash  of  trite 
images  and  sentimental  meanderings."  Miss 
Matheson  goes  so  far  as  to  introduce  a  shadowy, 
gleaming  figure,  which,  with  hand  high  up- 
raised over  the  characters'  heads,  describes  the 
Sign  of  the  Cross.  Mr.  Ranger  Gull  introduces 
as  a  manservant  one  of  the  most  celebrated 
burglars  of  the  day,  a  peer  poisoned  with  carbon 
disulphide,  wireless  apparatus,  and  the  lost  heir 
to  a  peerage.  As  for  "Richard  Dehan"  it  is 
enough  to  quote  one  of  her  characters'  remarks : 
"  I  had  drained  my  cup  of  shame  to  the  dregs." 

38 


LITANY  OF  THE   NOVELIST 


This  sort  of  thing  is  produced  in  great 
abundance,  and  has  helped  to  bring  the  novel 
down.  Unreality,  extravagance,  stage  tears, 
offensive  piety,  ridiculous  abductions  and  ma- 
chinery—  because  of  those  we  have  "lost 
face"  like  outraged  Chinamen.  No  wonder 
that  people  of  common  intelligence,  who  find 
at  their  friend's  house  drivel  such  as  this,  should 
look  upon  the  novel  as  unworthy.  It  is 
natural,  though  it  is  unjust.  The  novel  is  a 
commodity,  and  if  it  seeks  a  wide  public  it 
must  make  for  a  low  one :  the  speed  of  a  fleet 
is  that  of  its  slowest  ship ;  the  sale  of  a  novel 
is  the  capacity  of  the  basest  mind.  Only  it 
might  be  remembered  that  all  histories  are  not 
accurate,  all  biographies  not  truthful,  all  eco- 
nomic textbooks  not  readable.  Likewise,  it 
should  be  remembered,  and  we  need  quote 
only  Mr.  W.  D.  Howells,  that  novels  are  not 
denned  by  the  worst  of  their  kind.  It  is  men's 
business  to  find  out  the  best  books ;  they  search 
for  the  best  wives,  why  not  for  the  best  novels  ? 
There  are  novels  that  one  can  love  all  one's 
life,  and  this  cannot  be  said  of  every  woman. 

39 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


There  are  to-day  in  England  about  twenty 
men  and  women  who  write  novels  of  a  certain 
quality,  and  about  as  many  who  fail,  but 
whose  appeal  is  to  the  most  intelligent.  These 
people  are  trying  to  picture  man,  to  describe 
their  period,  to  pluck  a  feather  from  the  wing 
of  the  fleeting  time.  They  do  not  write  about 
radium  murders,  or  heroines  clad  in  orchids 
and  tiger  skins.  They  strive  to  seize  a  little 
of  the  raw  life  in  which  they  live.  The  claim 
is  simple;  even  though  we  may  produce  two 
thousand  novels  a  year  which  act  upon  the 
brain  in  the  evening  as  cigarettes  do  after  lunch, 
we  do  put  forth  a  small  number  of  novels  which 
are  the  mirror  of  the  day.  Very  few  are  good 
novels,  and  perhaps  not  one  will  live,  but  many 
a  novel  concerned  with  labour  problems,  money, 
freedom  in  love,  will  have  danced  its  little 
dance  to  some  purpose,  will  have  created  un- 
rest, always  better  than  stagnation,  will  have 
aroused  controversy,  anger,  impelled  some 
people,  if  not  to  change  their  life,  at  least  to 
tolerate  that  others  should  do  so.  "The  New 
Machiavelli",  "  Huckleberry  Finn",  "The 

40 


LITANY  OF  THE  NOVELIST 


White  Peacock",  "The  Rise  of  Silas  Lapham", 
"Ethan  Frome",  —  none  of  those  are  supreme 
books,  but  every  one  of  them  is  a  hand  grenade 
flung  at  the  bourgeoisie;  we  do  not  want  to 
kill  it,  but  we  do  want  to  wake  it  up. 

It  is  the  bourgeoisie's  business  to  find  out 
the  novels  that  will  wake  it  up ;  it  should  take 
as  much  pains  to  do  this  as  to  find  out  the  best 
cigar.  The  bourgeoisie  has  congestion  of  the 
brain ;  the  works  of  scholars  will  stupefy  it 
still  more ;  only  in  the  novelists  of  the  day, 
who  are  rough,  unpleasant,  rebellious,  restless, 
will  they  find  a  remedy. 

Whether  the  reading  public  can  discern  that 
undying  flame  in  the  choking  smoke  of  books 
written  for  money  and  not  for  love,  is  another 
question.  Every  year  more  novels  are  pub- 
lished, but  when  one  considers  the  novelists 
of  the  past,  Thackeray's  continual  flow  of 
sugary  claptrap,  the  incapacity  of  Dickens  to 
conceive  beauty,  the  almost  unrelieved,  stagey 
solemnity  of  Walter  Scott,  the  novelist  of  to-day 
is  inclined  to  thank  God  that  he  is  not  as  other 
men.  Those  old  writers  trod  our  paths  for  us, 

41 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


but  they  walked  blindfold;  let  us  recognize 
their  splendid  qualities,  their  feeling  for  atmo- 
sphere, their  knowledge  of  men,  but  we  find 
more  that  is  honest  and  hopeful  in  a  single  page 
of  "Tono  Bungay"  than  in  all  the  great  Vic- 
torians put  together.  Yes,  we  are  arrogant ; 
why  not?  Why  should  it  be  natural  to  us  to 
see  our  faults  and  not  our  talents?  We  are 
held  in  contempt,  but  such  was  the  fate  of 
every  prophet;  they  make  us  into  mummers 
and  we  learn  mummery,  but  Balzac  and  Tur- 
genev  rise  from  their  own  dust.  We  are  not 
safe  people,  or  quiet  people ;  not  tame  rabbits 
in  a  hutch,  nor  even  romantic  rogues :  most  of 
us  are  no  more  romantic  than  jockeys. 

It  is,  perhaps,  because  we  are  not  safe  (and 
are  we  any  less  safe  than  mining  magnates?) 
that  we  are  disliked.  We  are  disliked,  as 
Stendhal  says,  because  all  differences  create 
hatred ;  because  by  showing  it  its  face  in  the 
glass  we  tend  to  disrupt  society,  to  exhibit  to 
its  shocked  eyes  what  is  inane  in  its  political 
constitution,  barbarous  in  its  moral  code.  We 
are  queer  people,  nasty  people,  but  we  are 

42 


LITANY  OF  THE  NOVELIST 

neither  nastier  nor  queerer  than  our  fellows. 
We  are  merely  more  shameless  and  exhibit  what 
they  hide.  We  have  got  outside,  and  we  hate 
being  outside;  we  should  so  much  like  to  en- 
list under  the  modern  standard,  the  silk  hat, 
and  yet  we  are  arrogant.  Doctors,  judges, 
bishops,  merchants,  think  little  of  us ;  we  regret 
it,  and  we  rejoice  in  it.  We  are  unhappy  and 
exalted  adventurers  in  the  frozen  fields  of 
human  thought.  We  are  the  people  who  make 
the  "footprints  on  the  sands  of  time."  Later 
on,  the  bourgeoisie  will  tread  in  them. 


43 


II 

WHO   IS   THE   MAN? 

AND  so  from  hour  to  hour  we  ripe  and  ripe, 
and  then  from  hour  to  hour  we  rot  and  rot.  A 
gloomy  saying,  but  one  which  applies  to  men 
as  well  as  to  empires,  and  to  none,  perhaps, 
more  than  to  those  men  who  stand  in  the  van- 
guard of  literature.  Of  very  few  writers,  save 
those  who  were  so  fortunate  as  to  be  carried 
away  by  death  in  the  plenitude  of  their  powers 
(unless,  like  Mr.  Thomas  Hardy,  they  drew 
back  from  the  battle  of  letters),  can  it  be  said 
that  the  works  of  their  later  years  were  equal 
to  those  of  their  maturity.  The  great  man  has 
his  heir  in  the  world,  one  who  impatiently 
waits  for  his  shoes,  and  is  assured  that  he  will 
fill  them.  It  is  well  so,  for  shoes  must  be  filled, 
and  it  is  good  to  know  the  young  giant  who  will 
one  day  make  the  sacred  footprints  on  the 
sands  of  time. 

44 


WHO  IS  THE  MAN? 


Who  are  these  men?  Is  it  possible  already 
to  designate  them?  To  mark  out  the  Hardy 
or  the  Meredith  of  to-morrow?  The  Bennett, 
the  Wells,  or  the  Galsworthy?  It  is  difficult. 
I  shall  not  be  surprised  if  some  quarrel  with 
these  names,  cavil  at  my  selection  and  challenge 
a  greatness  which  they  look  upon  as  transient. 
Those  critics  may  be  right.  I  do  not,  in  this 
article,  attempt  a  valuation  of  those  whom  I 
will  call  the  literary  novelists,  that  is  to  say 
the  men  who  have  "somehow",  and  owing  to 
hardly  ascertained  causes,  won  their  way  into 
the  front  rank  of  modern  English  letters.  It 
may  be  urged  that  these  are  not  our  big  men, 
and  that  the  brazen  blaring  of  popular  trumpets 
has  drowned  the  blithe  piping  of  tenderer 
songsters.  But,  if  we  view  facts  sanely,  we 
must  all  agree  that  there  are  in  England  five 
men,  among  them  a  foreigner,  who  hold  with- 
out challenge  the  premier  position  :  Mr.  Arnold 
Bennett,  Mr.  Joseph  Conrad,  Mr.  John  Gals- 
worthy, Mr.  Thomas  Hardy,  and  Mr.  H.  G. 
Wells.  Theirs  is  a  special  position ;  there  is 
not  one  of  them,  I  suppose,  whose  sales  would 

45 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


create  envy  in  the  bosom  of  Mr.  Harold  Bell 
Wright  or  of  Mrs.  Barclay;  nor  are  they  of 
the  super-hyper  class,  whose  works  are  issued 
in  wisely  limited  editions  and  printed  in  over- 
beautiful  type.  They  are,  in  a  very  rough  way, 
the  men  of  their  time  and,  a  very  little,  the  men 
of  all-time.  Whatever  be  their  greatness  or 
their  littleness,  they  are  the  men  who  will,  for 
the  University  Extension  lecturer  of  1950, 
represent  the  English  novel  in  a  given  period ; 
they  are  not  the  most  literary  of  their  contem- 
poraries.; they  have  not  more  ideas  than  some 
of  their  contemporaries,  and  all  of  them  have 
their  faults,  their  mannerisms  and  their  lapses, 
but  yet,  in  a  rough  and  general  way,  these  five 
men  combine  more  ideas  with  more  style  than 
any  who  are  beyond  their  group.  "Somehow" 
they  stand  at  the  head,  and  I  make  no  attempt 
to  criticise  them,  to  classify  them;  I  have 
even  named  them  in  alphabetical  order. 

Now,  not  one  of  these  men  is  under  forty ; 
one  is  over  seventy;  one  approaches  sixty. 
They  must  be  replaced.  Not  yet,  of  course, 
though  some  of  the  young  begin,  a  little  rashly, 

46 


WHO  IS  THE  MAN? 


to  cast  stones  at  those  mature  glories.  But 
still,  some  time,  faced  as  we  are  with  a  horde 
of  novelists,  not  less  in  these  islands  than 
fifteen  hundred,  we  must  ask  ourselves:  Who 
are  the  young  men  who  rear  their  heads  above 
the  common  rank?  Which  among  them  are 
likely  to  inherit  the  purple? 

In  such  an  examination  we  must  not  ask  for 
achievement,  for  by  young  men  I  mean  those 
who  have  not  passed,  or  have  but  lately  passed 
thirty.  That  they  should  show  promise  at  all 
is  remarkable  enough,  and  distinguishes  them 
from  their  forbears;  while  Mr.  Bennett,  Mr. 
Galsworthy,  and  Mr.  Conrad  published  no 
novel  at  all  before  they  were  thirty,  and  Mr. 
Wells  not  much  more  than  a  fantastic  romance, 
the  young  men  of  to-day  tell  a  different  tale. 
Mr.  J.  D.  Beresford,  Mr.  Gilbert  Cannan, 
Mr.  E.  M.  Forster,  Mr.  D.  H.  Lawrence,  Mr. 
Compton  Mackenzie,  Mr.  Oliver  Onions,  Mr. 
Frank  Swinnerton,  are  a  brilliant  little  stable, 
and  have  mostly  tried  their  paces  many  years 
earlier;  theirs  have  been  the  novels  of  the 
twenty-eight-year-old,  in  one  case,  at  least, 

47 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


that  of  the  twenty-six-year-old.  They  have 
affirmed  themselves  earlier  than  did  their 
seniors  and  yet  quite  definitely. 

The  short  list  defies  challenge,  even  though 
some  may  wish  to  include  an  obscurer  favourite, 
some  other  young  intellectual  novelist  or  a 
more  specialised  man  such  as  Mr.  Algernon 
Blackwood,  or  Mr.  James  Stephens  or  a  recent 
discovery  such  as  Mr.  Alec  Waugh,  Mr.  J.  W. 
N.  Sullivan,  Mr.  Stephen  McKenna  or  Mr. 
James  Joyce ;  still,  and  I  do  not  deny  that  the 
classification  is  a  very  general  one,  I  think  it 
almost  undeniable  that  those  are  the  men 
among  whom  will  be  recruited  the  leaders  of 
to-morrow.  Indeed,  I  have  neglected  some 
aspirants,  relegated  them  into  a  class  which 
will,  in  a  few  years,  give  us  the  inheritors  of 
certain  men  of  high  literary  quality  who,  owing 
to  accident,  to  style,  or  to  choice  of  subject, 
have  not  laid  hands  upon  literary  crowns. 
But  that  is  inevitable.  The  seven  men  selected 
are  those  who  show  promise. 

I  mean  by  promise  a  suggestion  that  the 
young  man  will  become  a  big  man,  that  is  to 

48 


WHO  IS  THE  MAN? 


say,  that  in  ten  years  or  so  he  will  be  the  vehicle 
of  the  modern  idea  through  the  style  of  the 
time ;  he  may  not  be  very  popular,  but  he  will 
not  be  unpopular ;  he  will  be  quoted,  criticised, 
discussed;  briefly,  he  will  matter.  Now  I  do 
not  suggest  that  the  seven  men  I  have  named 
will  inevitably  become  big  men.  There  is  not 
room  for  seven  big  novelists,  but  it  is  among 
them  that,  in  all  likelihood,  the  two  or  three 
leaders  will  be  found.  And  then  there  is  the 
dark  horse,  still,  perhaps,  in  some  university, 
in  America,  or  in  a  colony,  perhaps  in  a  factory 
or  a  shop,  who  may  sally  forth  and  destroy  our 
estimates ;  as  I  write  I  have,  at  least,  one 
such  dark  horse  in  my  mind.  But  we  must 
reckon  on  the  known  in  a  valuation,  and  I  sub- 
mit that  we  know  nothing  beyond  this  list. 

The  manner  in  which  these  men  will  express 
themselves  cannot  be  determined  absolutely. 
The  literary  tradition  is  changing,  and  a  new 
one  is  being  made.  If  the  future  is  to  give  us 
a  Balzac  or  a  Fielding,  he  will  not  write  like  a 
Balzac  or  a  Fielding ;  he  will  use  a  new  style. 
That  is  why  there  is  very  little  hope  for  those 

49 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


who  competently  follow  the  tradition  of  the 
past.  If  a  "Madame  B ovary"  were  to  be 
written  to-day  by  a  man  of  thirty,  it  would  not 
be  a  good  book ;  it  would  be  a  piece  of  literary 
archaeology.  If  the  seven  young  men  become 
the  men  of  to-morrow,  it  will  be  because  they 
break  away  from  the  old  traditions,  the  tradi- 
tion of  aloofness  and  the  tradition  of  comment. 
They  do  not  rigidly  stand  outside  the  canvas, 
as  did  Flaubert  and  de  Maupassant;  nor  do 
they  obviously  intervene  as  did  Thackeray. 
If  they  look  back  at  all  it  is  to  Dostoievsky  and 
Stendhal,  that  is  to  say,  they  stand  midway 
between  the  expression  of  life  and  the  expres- 
sion of  themselves ;  indeed,  they  try  to  express 
both,  to  achieve  art  by  "criticising  life" ;  they 
attempt  to  take  nature  into  partnership.  Only 
they  do  this  to  a  greater  or  lesser  extent ;  some 
do  little  more  than  exploit  themselves,  show 
the  world  in  relation  to  their  own  autobi- 
ography ;  others  hold  up  the  mirror  to  life  and 
interpose  between  picture  and  object  the  veil 
of  their  prejudice ;  and  one  of  them  is  almost  a 
commentator,  for  his  prejudice  is  so  strong  as 

5° 


WHO  IS  THE  MAN? 


to  become  a  protagonist  in  his  drama.  All 
this  is  to  be  expected,  for  one  cannot  expect  a 
little  group  of  seven,  which  enjoys  the  high 
honour  of  having  been  selected  from  among 
fifteen  hundred,  to  be  made  up  of  identical 
entities.  Indeed  all  must  be  contrasting  per- 
sons ;  if  two  of  them  were  alike,  one  would  be 
worthless.  And  so  each  one  has  his  devil  to 
exorcise  and  his  guardian  angel  to  watch  over 
him.  They  must  beware  of  exploiting  them- 
selves overmuch,  of  becoming  dull  as  they  ex- 
haust their  own  history,  of  being  cold  if  they 
draw  too  thin  a  veil  of  temperament  across  the 
object  which  they  illumine.  But  these  dangers 
are  only  the  accidents  of  a  dangerous  trade, 
where  a  man  hazards  his  soul  and  may  see  it 
grow  sick.  If  we  wish  to  measure  these  dan- 
gers, we  must  then  analyse  the  men  one  by  one, 
and  it  will  serve  us  best  to  divide  them  into 
three  groups;  self-exploiters,  mirror-bearers, 
and  commentators.  These  are  not  exact  divi- 
sions ;  they  overlap  on  one  another ;  one  man 
denies  by  one  book  what  he  affirms  by  a  second. 
But,  in  a  very  rough  way,  these  divisions  will 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


serve;  hesitation  and  contradictions  indicate, 
indeed  better  than  achievement,  the  tempestu- 
ous course  of  promising  youth. 

Though,  broadly  speaking,  the  seven  young 
men  are  profoundly  interested  in  themselves, 
four  attach  especial  importance  to  the  life 
which  has  made  them  what  they  are.  Messrs. 
Carman,  Walpole,  Beresford  and  Lawrence, 
capable  though  they  be  of  standing  outside 
themselves,  are  without  much  doubt  happier 
when  they  stand  inside.  I  do  not  know  in 
extreme  detail  where  they  were  born  or  what 
they  suffered,  but  it  demands  no  great  sagacity 
to  reconstruct,  for  instance,  Mr.  Walpole  as  a 
man  who  went  to  Cambridge,  taught  in  a 
school,  and  later  wrote  books;  likewise  Mr. 
Beresford,  as  one  who  struggled  up  against 
poverty  and  physical  infirmity  into  a  place  in 
the  sunshine  of  letters;  Mr.  Carman  is  still 
more  emphatically  interested  in  the  reactions 
of  his  own  harsh  and  sensitive  temperament, 
while  Mr.  Lawrence,  a  little  more  puzzling,  is 
very  much  the  lover  of  life  telling  us  tales  of 
his  mistress.  This  is  not,  I  think,  because  they 

52 


WHO  IS  THE   MAN? 


take  the  facts  that  lie  nearest  to  their  hand  as 
the  argument  of  their  play.  Each  one  of  them 
has  shown  by  some  excursion  that  he  was  ca- 
pable of  jerking  the  earth  off  its  axis,  the  axis 
being,  with  him  as  with  all  of  us,  his  own 
personality.  Thus  Mr.  Cannan,  in  "Peter 
Homunculus",  presents  in  Meredithian  wise  a 
picture  of  the  development  of  a  very  young  man, 
a  rather  romantic  though  metallically  brilliant 
young  man  predestined  by  nature  to  have  a 
bad,  but  very  exciting  time;  that  is  Mr. 
Cannan.  More  clearly  still,  in  "Little 
Brother",  he  takes  himself  up  again,  himself 
wondering  in  Cambridge  "what  it's  all  for", 
as  Mr.  Wells  would  say,  wondering  still  more, 
and  still  more  vainly,  when  he  enters  London's 
cultured  circles  from  which  he  escapes  through 
an  obscure  byway  of  Leicester  Square.  And 
then  again,  in  "Round  The  Corner",  it  is,  a 
very  little,  Mr.  Cannan  in  Manchester,  incredu- 
lously examining,  and  through  Serge  comment- 
ing upon  the  world.  Were  it  not  for  "Devious 
Ways"  one  would  be  inclined  to  think  that 
Mr.  Cannan  had  nothing  to  say  except  about 

53 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


himself,  and  indeed  it  is  disquieting  to  think 
that  the  book  which  saves  him  from  such  a  con- 
clusion is  inferior  to  his  subjective  work.  Still, 
it  is  not  altogether  a  bad  book ;  it  is  not  the 
sort  of  book  with  which  Mr.  Cannan  will  bid 
for  fame,  but  it  represents  the  streak  of  detach- 
ment which  is  essential  if  this  author  is  to  show 
himself  able  to  stand  outside  his  own  canvas; 
moreover,  in  "Round  The  Corner",  Mr.  Cannan 
was  infinitely  less  limited  by  himself  than  in 
his  previous  books.  The  praise  that  has  been 
showered  on  this  novel  was  perfervid  and  in- 
discriminate ;  it  was  not  sufficiently  taken  into 
account  that  the  book  was  congested,  that  the 
selection  of  details  was  not  unerring,  and  that 
the  importation  of  such  a  character  as  Serge 
laid  the  author  open  to  the  imputation  of  hav- 
ing recently  read  "Sanin";  but,  all  this  being 
said,  it  is  certain  that  "Round  The  Corner", 
with  its  accurate  characterisation,  its  atmo- 
spheric sense  and  its  diversity,  marked  a  definite 
stage  in  the  evolution  of  Mr.  Cannan.  Though 
refusing  to  accept  it  as  work  of  the  first  rank, 
I  agree  that  it  is  an  evidence  of  Mr.  Cannan's 

54 


WHO  IS  THE   MAN? 


ability  to  write  work  of  the  first  rank ;  he  may 
never  write  it,  but  this  book  is  his  qualification 
for  entering  the  race.  His  later  novels,  "  Young 
Earnest"  and  "Mendel",  have  done  him  no 
good;  they  are  too  closely  related  to  his  own 
life;  his  private  emotions  are  also  too  active 
in  his  pacifist  skit,  "Windmills",  which  is  in- 
ferior to  "The  Tale  of  A  Tub."  So  far,  Mr. 
Cannan  has  taken  himself  too  seriously,  one 
might  almost  say,  too  dramatically ;  those 
sufferings,  misunderstandings,  isolations  and 
struggles  of  his  youth  have  been  to  him  too 
vivid  and  too  significant.  For  a  long  time  his 
picture  fogged  his  vision ;  he  could  not  see  him- 
self for  himself.  But,  as  chastening  age  touches 
him,  he  appears  to  view  more  sanely  the  epic 
of  his  own  life  and  more  wholly  the  epic  of  the 
life  of  others.  If  he  will  consent  to  be  yet  less 
the  actor  and  more  the  spectator,  he  will  prob- 
ably succeed  in  becoming  the  playwright. 

Mr.  Walpole  does  not,  so  definitely  as  Mr. 
Cannan,  view  the  world  in  terms  of  his  own 
life.  His  personality  is  otherwise  tinged ;  he 
is  less  angry,  less  chafed,  and  it  may  be  that 

55 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


because  he  is  of  the  softer  Southern  breed  he 
has  no  share  in  the  dour  aggressiveness  of  Mr. 
Carman's  North  country.  And  there  is  a  varia- 
tion in  the  self  that  Mr.  Walpole  paints ;  it  is 
not  what  he  is,  or  even  what  he  thinks  he  is, 
but  what  he  would  like  to  be.  In  his  chief 
work,  by  which  I  mean  the  most  artistic,  "Mr. 
Perrin  and  Mr.  Traill",  the  writer  shares  with 
us  much  of  the  wistfulness  he  must  have  felt  in 
his  early  manhood,  but  Mr.  Traill  is  not  Mr. 
Walpole ;  if  he  were,  he  would  have  recurred  in 
other  novels;  he  is  the  simple,  delicate,  and 
passionate  young  man  (passionate,  that  is,  in 
the  modest  English  way),  that  Mr.  Walpole 
would  like  to  be.  This  we  know  because  Mr. 
Walpole  loves  Traill  and  sees  no  weakness  in 
him.  No  lover  can  criticise  his  lady,  if  his 
lady  she  is  to  remain,  and  thus,  in  his  incapacity 
to  see  aught  save  charm  in  his  hero,  Mr.  Wal- 
pole indicates  the  direction  of  his  own  desire. 
Yet,  and  strangely  enough,  in  "The  Prelude  to 
Adventure"  there  is  a  suggestion  that  Mr. 
Walpole  would  gladly  be  Dune,  haughty  and 
sombre;  in  "Fortitude"  that  he  would  be 

56 


WHO  IS  THE  MAN? 


Peter  Westcott,  have  his  fine  courage,  his  deli- 
cacy and  his  faith.  He  asks  too  much  in  wish- 
ing to  be  Proteus,  but,  in  so  doing,  he  puts 
forward  a  claim  to  the  great  seats,  for  he  tells 
us  his  aspiration  rather  than  his  realisation. 
Indeed,  if  it  were  not  that  "The  Prelude  to 
Adventure"  is  so  very  much  his  life  in  Cam- 
bridge, "Mr.  Perrin  and  Mr.  Traill"  his  career 
in  a  little  school,  "Fortitude"  his  life  under  the 
influence  of  London's  personality,  he  would 
not  come  at  all  into  the  class  of  those  men  who 
make  copy  of  their  past.  And  it  is  a  feature 
of  high  redeeming  value  that  in  "Maradick  at 
Forty"  he  should  have  attempted  to  make  copy 
of  his  future,  for,  again,  here  is  aspiration.  Mr. 
Walpole  needs  to  increase  his  detachment  and 
widen  the  fields  which  he  surveys.  Schools 
and  Cambridge :  these  are  tales  of  little  boys 
and  their  keepers ;  literary  London :  that  is 
the  grasshopper  and  its  summer  singing.  He 
needs  to  develop,  to  embrace  business  and 
politics,  the  commonness  of  love,  and  the  vital 
roughness  of  the  world.  He  has  tried  to  do 
this  in  "The  Dark  Forest ",  but  this  is  so  close 

57 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


a  pastiche  of  Russian  novels  that  it  cannot 
stand  for  Mr.  Walpole's  emancipator. 

In  Mr.  Beresford  we  discover  a  closer  identity 
between  the  man  and  the  mask,  though  he  has 
written  several  books  where  he  does  not  figure, 
"The  Hampdenshire  Wonder",  the  tale  of  an 
incredible  child,  "The  House  in  Demetrius 
Road",  and  "Goslings",  a  fantastic  commen- 
tary upon  life.  Mr.  Beresford  is  more  at  his 
ease  when  he  tells  his  own  tale.  In  three  books, 
"The  Early  History  of  Jacob  Stahl",  "A  Can- 
didate for  Truth",  and  "The  Invisible  Event", 
Mr.  Beresford  has  exploited  himself  with  ex- 
traordinary eloquence;  he  has  the  sense  of 
selection,  he  is  not  crabbed,  and  he  informs  with 
fine  passion  those  early  years  through  which 
fleets  a  splendid  woman  figure,  realised  by 
none  other  save  Mr.  Wells.  In  these  books,  as 
also  in  "Housemates",  Mr.  Beresford  shows 
that  he  feels  love,  isolation,  and  pain;  those 
other  young  men  with  whom  we  are  concerned 
feel  these  things  too,  but  hardly  one  so  passion- 
ately. Mr.  Beresford's  merit  is  that  he  is 
more  ordinary,  thus  that  he  is  less  unreal  than 

58 


WHO  IS  THE  MAN? 


the  passionate  persons  his  rivals  are  or  would 
be.  Yet,  if  this  were  all,  it  might  not  be 
enough,  for  a  tale  may  be  told  twice,  but  not 
more  often ;  if,  in  the  first  part  of  "Goslings", 
Mr.  Beresford  had  not  shown  how  closely  and 
incisively  he  can  picture  the  lower-middle  class, 
analyse  its  ambitions,  sympathise  with  its 
hopes,  his  would  be  a  limited  scope.  He  needs 
to  go  furtner  in  this  direction,  to  extend  his 
criticism  of  life  through  more  of  those  people 
and  more  of  their  fates,  while  he  himself  remains 
outside.  He  must  choose;  Jacob  Stahl,  that 
is  Mr.  Beresford,  is  a  charming  creature  whom 
one  would  gladly  know;  but  Jasper  Thrale, 
expounding  the  world,  is  not  Mr.  Beresford, 
for  he  is  a  prig.  Mr.  Beresford  must  run  on 
two  lines;  one  for  himself  alone,  and  one  for 
the  world  as  he  sees  it. 

Mr.  D.  H.  Lawrence  l  is  not  in  the  same  case. 

Once  only  can  he  have  been  autobiographical ; 

either  in  "The  White  Peacock",  or  in  "Sons 

and  Lovers",  for  he  could  evidently  not  have 

been,  at  the  same  time,  the  poetic  son  of  a 

1  See  special  chapter. 

59 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


collier  and  a  cultured  member  of  the  well-to-do 
classes  in  a  farming  community.  I  suppose  it 
is  an  open  secret  that  Mr.  Lawrence  is  closer 
to  the  Nottingham  collier  than  to  the  rustic 
who  made  hay  while  others  played  Bach. 
But  it  does  not  matter  very  much  whether  he 
be  one  or  the  other ;  it  is  not  his  physical  self 
he  puts  into  his  books,  but  the  adventures  of 
his  temperament.  It  is  an  extraordinary  tem- 
perament, a  mixture  of  rough  Northern  pride 
with  wistful  Northern  melancholy.  His  char- 
acters, and  this  applies  to  George  and  Lettice, 
in  "The  White  Peacock",  to  Sigmund,  in  "The 
Trespasser",  to  Paul  Morel,  Mrs.  Morel  and 
Miriam,  in  "Sons  and  Lovers",  are  always 
battling  with  adversity  for  the  sake  of  their 
fine  hopes,  are  held  up  by  their  pride,  and 
divorced  a  little  from  commoner  folk  by  the 
taste  that  takes  them  to  Verlaine  and  Lulli. 

If  it  is  Mr.  Lawrence  to  whom  every  flower 
of  the  hedge  and  every  feather  of  the  strutting 
cock  cries  colour  and  passionate  life,  if  it  is  for 
him  that  the  water-meadows  are  fragrant  and 
the  starlit  nights  endless  deep,  it  is  not  for  him 

60 


WHO  IS  THE  MAN? 


that  the  characters  live,  but  for  us;  he  takes 
his  share,  he  leaves  us  ours ;  he  inflames  his 
characters,  then  allows  them  to  act.  Indeed, 
if  no  fault  were  to  be  found  with  him  on  mere 
literary  score,  Mr.  Lawrence  would  be  more 
than  a  man  of  promise ;  he  would  have  arrived. 
But  his  passion  carries  him  away ;  he  sees  too 
much,  shows  too  much;  he  analyses  too  fully, 
discovers  too  many  elements.  It  may  be  urged 
that  no  artist  can  see  or  analyse  too  fully. 
But  he  can,  if  he  discovers  that  which  is  not 
there.  Mr.  Lawrence,  having  found  gold  in 
the  dross  of  common  men  and  women,  is  in- 
clined to  infer  that  there  is  too  much  gold  in 
the  vulgar.  Being  convinced  of  this,  he  be- 
comes hectic ;  his  people  are  as  flames,  feeding 
upon  mortal  bodies  and  burning  them  up.  His 
peril  is  excessive  sensation.  He  needs  some 
better  knowledge  of  affairs,  more  intercourse 
with  the  cruder  rich,  with  the  drab  middle 
class,  so  that  his  brilliant  vision  may  by  its 
dulling  become  tolerable  to  meaner  eyes.  He 
needs  to  discover  those  for  whom  music  hath 
no  charms,  and  yet  are  not  base  in  attitude. 

61 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


Mr.  Lawrence,  who  exploits  his  life  not  over- 
much, affords  us  a  necessary  transition  between 
those  who  are  interested  in  little  else  and  the 
second  group,  Mr.  Mackenzie,  Mr.  Onions,  and 
Mr.  Swinnerton,  who  have,  with  more  or  less 
success,  tried  to  stand  back  as  they  write.  Of 
these,  Mr.  Compton  Mackenzie  is  the  most 
interesting,  because,  in  three  volumes,  he  has 
made  three  new  departures:  "The  Passionate 
Elopement",  a  tale  of  powder  and  patches, 
"Carnival",  a  romance  of  the  meaner  parts  of 
London  and  of  Charing  Cross  Road,  and  lastly 
"Sinister  Street",  where  he  links  up  with  those 
who  exploit  only  their  experiences.  Evidently 
Mr.  Mackenzie  believes  that  a  good  terrier  never 
shakes  a  rat  twice.  Had  "Sinister  Street" 
been  his  chief  contribution  to  literature,  Mr. 
Mackenzie  would  have  found  his  place  indicated 
in  the  first  group,  but  as  he  began  by  standing 
outside  himself  it  must  be  assumed  that  he 
thought  it  a  pity  to  let  so  much  good  copy  go 
begging.  He  is  a  man  difficult  of  assessment 
because  of  his  diversity.  He  has  many  graces 
of  style,  and  a  capacity  which  may  be  danger- 

62 


WHO  IS  THE  MAN? 


ous  of  infusing  charm  into  that  which  has  no 
charm.  He  almost  makes  us  forget  that  the 
heroine  of  "Carnival"  is  a  vulgar  little  Cock- 
ney, by  tempting  us  to  believe  that  it  might 
have  been  otherwise  with  her.  There  is  a 
cheapness  of  sentiment  about  this  Jenny,  this 
Islington  columbine,  but  we  must  not  reproach 
Mr.  Mackenzie  for  loving  his  heroine  over- 
much ;  too  many  of  his  rivals  are  not  loving 
theirs  enough.  Indeed,  his  chief  merit  is  that 
he  finds  the  beautiful  and  the  lovable  more 
readily  than  the  hideous.  His  figures  can  serve 
as  re-agents  against  the  ugly  heroine  and  the 
scamp  hero  who  grew  fashionable  twenty  years 
ago.  His  success,  if  it  comes  at  all,  will  be  due 
to  his  executive  rather  than  to  his  innately 
artistic  quality,  for  he  often  fails  to  sift  his  de- 
tails. In  "Sinister  Street"  we  endure  a  great 
congestion  of  word  and  interminable  catalogues 
of  facts  and  things.  If  he  has  a  temperament 
at  all,  which  I  believe,  it  is  stifled  by  the  mantle 
in  which  he  clothes  it.  It  is  not  that  Mr. 
Mackenzie  knows  too  much  about  his  char- 
acters, for  that  is  not  possible,  but  he  tells  us 

63 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


too  much.  He  does  not  give  our  imagination 
a  chance  to  work.  Yet,  his  hat  is  in  the  ring. 
If  he  can  prune  his  efflorescent  periods  and 
select  among  his  details,  he  may,  by  force  of 
charm,  attain  much  further  than  his  fellows. 
He  will  have  to  include  just  those  things  and 
no  others  which  can  give  us  an  illusion  of  the 
world. 

In  direct  opposition  to  Mr.  Mackenzie,  we 
find  Mr.  Onions.  While  Mr.  Mackenzie  gives 
us  too  much  and  allows  us  to  give  nothing,  Mr. 
Onions  gives  us  hardly  anything  and  expects  us 
to  write  his  novel  for  him  as  we  read  it.  There 
are  two  strands  in  his  work,  one  of  them  fan- 
tastic or  critical,  the  other  creative.  Of  the 
first  class  are  the  tales  of  "  Widdershins "  and 
"The  Two  Kisses",  a  skit  on  studios  and 
boarding-houses.  Even  slightly  more  massive 
works,  such  as  the  love  epic  of  advertisement, 
"Good  Boy  Seldom",  and  the  fierce  revelation 
of  disappointment,  which  is  in  "Little  Devil 
Doubt",  do  not  quite  come  into  the  second 
class ;  they  are  not  the  stones  on  which  Mr. 
Onions  is  to  build.  They  are  a  destructive 

64 


WHO  IS  THE  MAN? 


criticism  of  modern  life,  and  criticism,  unless  it 
is  creative,  as  it  is  in  Mr.  Wells's  novels,  is  a 
thing  of  the  day,  however  brilliant  it  may  seem. 
Mr.  Oliver  Onions  can  be  judged  only  on  his 
trilogy,  "In  Accordance  with  the  Evidence", 
"The  Debit  Account",  and  "The  Story  of 
Louie",  for  these  are  creative  works,  threaded 
and  connected;  they  are  an  attempt  and,  on 
the  whole,  a  very  successful  one,  to  take  a  sec- 
tion of  life  and  to  view  it  from  different  angles. 
If  the  attempt  has  not  completely  succeeded, 
it  is  perhaps  because  it  was  too  much.  It 
rests  upon  close  characterisation,  a  sense  of  the 
iron  logic  of  facts  and  upon  atmospheric  quality. 
There  is  not  a  young  man,  nor  for  the  matter 
of  that  an  old  one,  more  capable  than  Mr. 
Onions  of  parting  the  souls  from  his  characters' 
bodies.  There  may  be  autobiography  in  some 
of  Mr.  Onions's  work,  but  there  is  in  his  trilogy 
no  more  than  should  colour  any  man's  books. 

Yet  Mr.  Onions  has  his  devil,  and  it  takes 
the  form  of  a  rage  against  the  world,  of  a  hatred 
that  seems  to  shed  a  bilious  light  over  his 
puppets.  His  strong  men  are  hard,  almost 

65 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


brutal,  inconsiderate,  dominant  only  by  dint 
of  intellect,  and  arrogant  in  their  dominance; 
his  weak  men  are  craven,  lying,  incapable  of 
sweetness ;  even  strong  Louie  is  so  haughty  as 
almost  to  be  rude.  All  this  appears  in  the  very 
style,  so  much  so  that,  were  it  not  for  the  cliche, 
I  would  quote  Buffon.  The  sentences  are  tor- 
tured as  if  born  in  agony;  the  highly-selected 
detail  is  reluctant,  avaricious,  as  if  Mr.  Onions 
hated  giving  the  world  anything.  And  yet, 
all  this  culminates  in  an  impression  of  extraordi- 
nary power;  Mr.  Onions  is  the  reticent  man 
whose  confidence,  when  earned,  is  priceless. 
He  lays  no  pearls  before  us ;  he  holds  them  in 
his  half -extended  hand  for  us  to  take  if  we  can. 
A  little  more  tenderness;  a  little  more  belief 
that  men  can  be  gentle  and  women  sweet;  a 
little  more  hope  and  some  pity,  and  Mr.  Onions 
will  arrive. 

Of  Mr.  Swinnerton,  who  also  stands  outside 
his  canvas,  I  am  not  so  sure.  He  made,  in 
"The  Casement",  an  elusive  picture  of  the  life 
of  the  well-to-do  when  confronted  with  the 
realities  of  life,  but  did  not  succeed  emphatically 

66 


WHO  IS  THE  MAN? 


enough  in  the  more  ponderous  effort  entitled 
"The  Happy  Family."  There  he  was  too  uni- 
form, too  mechanical,  and  rather  too  much 
bound  by  literary  traditions.  He  was  so 
bound  also  in  his  brilliant  "Nocturne",  the 
tragedy  of  five  creatures  within  a  single  night. 
But  Mr.  Swinnerton  has  a  point  of  view,  an 
attitude  towards  life;  I  cannot  define  it,  but 
I  am  conscious  of  its  existence,  and  in  a  man  of 
promise  that  is  quite  enough.  For  a  man  with 
an  individual  attitude  will  make  it  felt  if  he 
has  the  weapons  of  style  with  which  to  express 
it.  Now  Mr.  Swinnerton  shows  a  great  dex- 
terity in  the  use  of  words,  felicity  of  phrase,  a 
discrimination  in  the  choice  of  details  which 
will  enable  him  to  embody  such  ideas  as  he 
may  later  on  conceive.  He  has  only  to  fear 
that  he  may  be  mistaken  as  to  the  size  of  his 
ideas ;  like  Mr.  Hugh  de  Selincourt  he  may  be 
too  much  inclined  to  take  as  the  plot  of  a  novel 
an  idea  and  a  story  in  themselves  too  slender. 
Under  modern  publishing  conditions  he  may 
be  compelled  to  spin  out  his  work ;  as  his 
tendency  is  to  concentrate,  he  may  find  himself 

67 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


so  much  hampered  as  to  lose  the  chief  charm  of 
his  writing,  viz.,  balance.  He  has  shown  charm 
in  "Nocturne",  some  power  in  "The  Happy 
Family";  these  two  qualities  need  blending, 
so  that  Mr.  Swinnerton  be  no  longer  two  men, 
but  one. 

Brief  mention  must  be  made  of  Mr.  Percival 
Gibbon.  Of  his  novels,  one  only,  "Souls  in 
Bondage",  showed  remarkable  promise,  but 
his  later  work,  with  the  exception  of  a  few  short 
stories,  was  a  little  disappointing.  In  his  first 
book  there  was  colour,  atmosphere,  characteri- 
sation, and  technique,  but  there  was  also  passion. 
The  passion  was  not  maintained  in  later  years. 
Other  qualities  were  still  there;  none  better 
than  he  can  to-day  translate  the  dusty  glare  or 
the  dank  warmth  of  the  tropics,  the  languor, 
veiling  fire,  of  its  men  and  women,  but  the  vision 
is  a  little  exterior.  Mr.  Gibbon  needs  to  ex- 
press his  point  of  view,  if  he  has  one,  to  let  us 
see  more  clearly  how  he  himself  stands  in  rela- 
tion to  the  world.  This  does  not  apply  to  Mr. 
de  Selincourt,  somewhat  afflicted  with  moral 
superciliousness,  whose  point  of  view  is  one  of 

68 


WHO  IS  THE  MAN? 


aloof  vigour.  To  a  great  charm  of  style  he 
adds  selectiveness ;  in  "A  Daughter  of  the 
Morning"  the  characterisation  is  inwrought, 
just  as  in  "A  Boy's  Marriage"  it  is  passionate. 
And  again  there  is  Mr.  C.  E.  Montague,  all 
bathed  in  the  glamour  of  George  Meredith  and 
Mr.  Henry  James.  Of  these  Mr.  de  Selincourt 
is  by  far  the  most  remarkable ;  he  has  elected 
to  depict  not  the  people  who  live  ill,  but  those 
whom  he  conceives  as  living  well,  proud  of 
their  body,  responsible  to  their  instincts.  In 
"A  Soldier  of  Life"  notably,  he  makes  almost 
credible  the  regeneration  of  the  "ordinary" 
man.  Still,  they  are  difficult  to  classify,  these 
three;  to  reject  their  candidature  may  be  too 
much,  so  fine  are  their  qualities;  and  yet  to 
inscribe  them  upon  the  roll  may  be  undue,  for 
they  have  not  the  raw  massiveness,  the  air  that 
one  wants  to  find  in  boys  about  to  be  men ; 
they  are  too  particular,  too  much  inclined  to 
look  away  from  the  world  and  to  concentrate 
on  some  microscopic  section.  To  enlarge  with- 
out loosening  is  what  they  need  to  do,  and  it  is 
no  easy  matter. 

69 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


Lastly,  and  by  himself,  there  is  Mr.  E.  M. 
Forster,  who  has  been  forgotten  a  little  in  a 
hurry,  because  he  has  not,  since  1910,  felt  in- 
clined to  publish  a  novel ;  he  is  still  one  of  the 
young  men,  while  it  is  not  at  all  certain  that  he 
is  not  "the"  young  man.  Autobiography  has 
had  its  way  with  him,  a  little  in  "A  Room  with 
a  View"  and  very  much  more  in  that  tale  of 
schoolmasters,  "The  Longest  Journey";  but 
it  was  "Howard's  End",  that  much  criticised 
work,  which  achieved  the  distinction  of  being 
popular,  though  of  high  merit.  This  marks  out 
Mr.  Forster  and  makes  it  likely  that  he  can 
climb  Parnassus  if  he  chooses.  In  "Howard's 
End"  Mr.  Forster  surveyed  the  world  in  par- 
ticular and  also  in  general;  he  was  together 
local  and  cosmic ;  he  was  conscious  of  the  little 
agitations  and  artificialities  of  the  cultured,  of 
the  upthrust  of  the  untaught  and  of  the  com- 
placent strength  of  those  who  rule.  Over  all, 
hung  his  own  self  as  the  wings  of  a  roc  darken- 
ing the  countryside.  It  is  because  Mr.  Forster 
has  seized  a  portion  of  the  world  and  welded 
it  with  himself  that  the  essence  of  him  may 

70 


WHO  IS  THE  MAN? 


persist  and  animate  other  worlds.  His  attitude 
is  one  of  tolerance ;  he  prays  that  we  may  not 
drift  too  far  from  the  pride  of  body  which  is  the 
pride  of  soul.  Mystic  athleticism ;  that  seems 
to  be  Mr.  Forster's  message ;  and  as  it  is  essen- 
tial that  the  man  of  to-morrow  should  be  a 
man  of  ideas  as  well  as  a  man  of  perceptions, 
it  is  quite  certain  that,  if  Mr.  Forster  chooses 
to  return  to  the  field,  he  will  establish  his  claim. 
One  word  as  to  women.  The  time  has  gone 
when  we  discriminated  between  the  work  of 
women  and  of  men;  to-day,  "Lucas  Malet", 
Miss  May  Sinclair,  Mrs.  Sedgwick,  Miss  Edith 
Wharton,  Miss  Violet  Hunt,  Miss  Ethel  Sidg- 
wick,  Mrs.  Belloc-Lowndes,  Mrs.  Dudeney 
must  take  their  chance  in  the  rough  and  tumble 
of  literary  criticism,  and  I- do  not  suggest  a 
comparison  between  them  and  the  leading  men. 
For  this  there  is  a  very  good  reason ;  the  young 
women  of  to-day  are  promising  work  of  an  en- 
tirely new  kind.  They  have  less  style  than 
their  precursors  and  more  ideas ;  such  women 
writers  as  Miss  Amber  Reeves,1  Miss  Sheila 
1  See  special  chapter. 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


Kaye-Smith,1  Miss  Viola  Meynell,  Miss  Tenny- 
son Jesse,  Miss  Clemence  Dave,  Miss  E.  M. 
Delafield,  Miss  Dorothy  Richardson,  Miss 
Bridget  Maclagan  have  produced,  so  far,  very 
little ;  they  can  be  indicated  as  candidates,  but 
much  more  faintly  than  their  masculine  rivals. 
They  write  less,  and  less  easily;  they  are 
younger  at  their  trade,  more  erratic.  It  is 
enough  to  mention  them,  and  to  say  that,  so 
far  as  women  are  showing  indications  of  ap- 
proximating to  men  in  literary  quality,  these 
are  the  women  who  are  likely  soon  to  bear  the 
standards  of  their  sex. 

To  sum  up,  I  would  suggest  that  the  rough 
classification  I  have  made  among  the  seven 
young  men  must  not  be  taken  as  fixed.  Some 
are  autobiographic  rather  than  evocative ;  some 
are  receptive  rather  than  personally  active, 
and  yet  others  have  not  chosen  between  the 
two  roads.  Yet,  taking  them  as  a  whole,  with 
the  reservation  of  possible  dark  horses,  these 
are  evidently  the  men  among  whom  will  be 
found  the  two  or  three  who  will  "somehow", 
1  See  special  chapter. 
72 


WHO  IS  THE  MAN? 


in  another  ten  years,  lead  English  letters.  It 
will  be  an  indefinable  "somehow",  a  com- 
pound of  intellectual  dominance  and  emotional 
sway.  We  shall  not  have  a  Bennett  for  a 
Bennett,  nor  a  Wells  for  a  Wells,  but  equiva- 
lents of  power  and  equivalents  of  significance, 
who  will  be  intimately  in  tune  with  their  time 
and  better  than  any  will  express  it. 


73 


ni 

THREE  YOUNG  NOVELISTS 

i 
D.  H.  LAWRENCE 

IT  is  not  a  very  long  time  since  Professor 
Osier  startled  America  and  England  by  pro- 
claiming that  man  was  too  old  at  forty.  This 
is  not  generally  held,  though,  I  suppose,  most 
of  us  will  accept  that  one  is  too  old  to  begin  at 
forty.  But  that  is  not  the  end :  very  soon,  in 
literature  at  least,  it  may  be  too  late  to  begin 
at  thirty,  if  we  are  to  take  into  account  the 
achievements  of  the  young  men,  of  whom  Mr. 
D.  H.  Lawrence  is  one  of  the  youngest.  Mr. 
Lawrence  is  certainly  one  of  the  young  men, 
not  a  member  of  a  school,  for  they  have  no 
formal  school,  and  can  have  none  if  they  are 
of  any  value,  but  a  partner  in  their  tendencies 
and  an  exponent  of  their  outlook.  He  has  all 

74 


THREE  YOUNG  NOVELISTS 


the  unruliness  of  the  small  group  that  is  rising 
up  against  the  threatening  State,  its  rules  and 
its  conventions,  proclaiming  the  right  of  the 
individual  to  do  much  more  than  live  —  namely, 
to  live  splendidly. 

It  is  this  link  makes  Mr.  Lawrence  so  in- 
teresting; this  fact  that,  like  them,  he  is  so 
very  much  of  his  time  so  hot,  controversial,  un- 
easy ;  that,  like  them,  he  has  the  sudden  fury 
of  the  bird  that  beats  against  the  bars  of  its 
cage.  But  while  the  young  men  sneer  at 
society,  at  the  family,  at  every  institution,  Mr. 
Lawrence  tends  to  accept  these  things :  he  has 
no  plan  of  reform,  no  magic  wand  with  which 
to  transmute  the  world  into  fairyland :  he 
claims  only  the  right  to  develop  his  individual- 
ity, and  to  see  others  develop  theirs,  within  a 
system  which  tortures  him  as  another  Cardinal 
La  Balue. 

This  it  is  differentiates  him  from  so  many  of 
his  rivals.  He  has  in  his  mind  no  organisa- 
tions; he  is  mainly  passionate  aspiration  and 
passionate  protest.  And  that  is  not  wonderful 
when  we  consider  who  he  is.  Surprising  to 

75 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


think,  this  prominent  young  novelist  is  only 
thirty-four.  Son  of  a  Nottinghamshire  coal 
miner,  a  Board-school  boy,  his  early  career 
seems  to  have  been  undistinguished :  a  county 
council  scholarship  made  of  him  a  school  teacher, 
imparting  knowledge  in  the  midst  of  old- 
fashioned  chaos  in  a  room  containing  several 
classes.  Then  another  scholarship,  two  years 
at  college,  and  Mr.  Lawrence  went  to  Croydon 
to  teach  for  less  than  ten  dollars  a  week. 
Then  the  literary  life,  though  I  extract  from 
his  record  the  delightful  fact  that  at  college 
they  gave  him  a  prize  for  history  and  chemistry, 
but  placed  him  very  low  in  the  English  class. 
(This  is  rather  embarrassing  for  those  wrho 
believe  in  the  public  endowment  of  genius.) 

I  have  said  "then  the  literary  life",  but  I 
was  wrong,  for  already  at  twenty-one  Mr. 
Lawrence  had  begun  "The  White  Peacock", 
of  which,  year  by  year,  and  he  confesses  often 
during  lectures,  he  was  laying  the  foundations. 
Mr.  Lawrence  did  not,  as  do  so  many  of  us, 
enter  the  literary  life  at  a  given  moment: 
literature  grew  in  him  and  with  him,  was  always 

76 


THREE  YOUNG  NOVELISTS 


with  him,  even  in  the  worst  years  of  his  delicate 
health.  If  literature  was  not  his  passion,  it 
was  to  his  passion  what  the  tongue  is  to  speech : 
the  essential  medium  of  his  expression. 

Sometimes,  when  reading  one  of  his  works,  I 
wonder  whether  Mr.  Lawrence  has  not  mis- 
taken his  medium,  and  whether  it  is  not  a 
painter  he  ought  to  have  been,  so  significant  is 
for  him  the  slaty  opalescence  of  the  heron's 
wing  and  so  rutilant  the  death  of  the  sun. 
When  he  paints  the  countryside,  sometimes  in 
his  simplicity  he  is  almost  Virgilian,  but  more 
often  he  is  a  Virgil  somehow  strayed  into  Capua 
and  intoxicated  with  its  wines.  All  through 
his  novels  runs  this  passionate  streak,  this 
vision  of  nature  in  relation  to  himself.  But  it 
is  certainly  in  "The  White  Peacock"  that  this 
sensation  attains  its  apogee.  It  is  not  a  story 
which  one  can  condense.  Strictly,  it  is  not  a 
story  at  all.  It  presents  to  us  a  group  of  well- 
to-do  people,  cultured,  and  yet  high  in  emo- 
tional tone. 

Mr.  Lawrence  himself,  who  figures  in  it,  is 
effaced;  Lettice,  wayward  and  beautiful,  is 

77 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


the  fragrance  of  sex,  but  not  more  so  than  the 
honeysuckle  in  the  hedges ;  George,  muscles 
rippling  under  his  skin,  insensitive  to  cruelty, 
yet  curiously  moved  by  delicacy,  is  the  brother 
of  the  bulls  he  herds;  and  all  the  others,  the 
fine  gentlemen,  the  laughing  girls,  farmers, 
school  teachers,  making  hay,  making  music, 
making  jokes,  walking  in  the  spangled  meadows 
and  living,  and  wedding,  and  dying,  all  of  them, 
come  to  no  resolution.  Their  lives  have  no 
beginning  and  no  end.  Mr.  Lawrence  looks : 
Pippa  passes.  It  is  almost  impossible  to  criti- 
cise "The  White  Peacock",  and  the  danger  in 
an  appreciation  is  that  one  should  say  too  much 
good  of  it,  for  the  book  yields  just  the  quality 
of  illusion  that  a  novel  should  give  us,  which 
does  not  of  itself  justify  the  critic  in  saying 
that  it  is  a  great  book.  For  the  novel,  equally 
with  the  picture,  can  never  reproduce  life;  it 
can  only  suggest  it,  and  when  it  does  suggest 
it,  however  peculiarly  or  partially,  one  is  in- 
clined to  exaggerate  the  impression  one  has 
received  and  to  refrain  from  considering 
whether  it  is  a  true  impression.  It  is  the  vivid- 

78 


THREE  YOUNG  NOVELISTS 


ness  of  Mr.  Lawrence's  nature-vision  which 
carries  us  away ;  such  phrases  as  these  deceive 
us:  "The  earth  was  red  and  warm,  pricked 
with  the  dark,  succulent  green  of  bluebell 
sheaths,  and  embroidered  with  grey-green 
clusters  of  spears,  and  many  white  flowerets. 
High  above,  above  the  light  tracery  of  hazel, 
the  weird  oaks  tangled  in  the  sunset.  Below 
in  the  first  shadows  drooped  hosts  of  little 
white  flowers,  so  silent  and  sad,  it  seemed  like 
a  holy  communion  of  pure  wild  things,  number- 
less, frail  and  folded  meekly  in  the  evening 
light."  They  deceive  us  because  Mr.  Law- 
rence's realisation  of  man  is  less  assured  than 
his  realisation  of  nature.  I  doubt  the  quality 
of  his  people's  culture,  the  spontaneity  of 
their  attitude  towards  the  fields  in  which 
they  breathe ;  their  spontaneity  seems  almost 
artificial. 

That  impression  Mr.  Lawrence  always  gives ; 
he  sees  the  world  through  a  magnifying  glass, 
and  perhaps  more  so  in  "  Sons  and  Lovers"  than 
in  "The  White  Peacock."  In  that  book  he 
gives  us  unabashed  autobiography  —  the  story 

79 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


of  his  early  youth,  of  his  relation  to  his  mother, 
a  creature  of  fitful,  delicate  charm.  Mrs. 
Morel  is  very  Northern ;  she  has,  with  the 
harshness  of  her  latitude,  its  fine  courage  and 
its  ambition;  Paul  Morel,  the  hero,  delicate, 
passionate,  artistic,  is  Mr.  Lawrence  himself, 
the  little  blue  flower  on  the  clinker  heap. 
And  those  other  folk  about  him,  dark  Miriam, 
slowly  brooding  over  him ;  her  rival,  that  con- 
quering captive  of  sex ;  the  brothers,  the 
sisters,  and  the  friends ;  this  intense  society  is 
vital  and  yet  undefinably  exaggerated.  Per- 
haps not  so  undefinably,  for  I  am  oppressed 
by  unbelief  when  I  find  this  grouping  of  agri- 
culturalists and  colliers  responding  to  the 
verse  of  Swinburne  and  Verlaine,  to  Italian,  to 
Wagner,  to  Bach.  I  cannot  believe  in  the 
spinet  at  the  pit's  mouth.  And  yet  all  this, 
Mr.  Lawrence  tells  us,  is  true.  Well,  it  is 
true,  but  it  is  not  general,  and  that  is  what 
impairs  the  value  of  Mr.  Lawrence's  visions. 
Because  a  thing  is,  he  believes  that  it  is ;  when 
a  thing  is,  it  may  only  be  accidental ;  it  may 
be  particular.  Now  one  might  discuss  at 

80 


THREE  YOUNG  NOVELISTS 


length  whether  a  novelist  should  concentrate 
on  the  general  or  on  the  particular,  whether  he 
should  use  the  microscope  or  the  aplanetic 
lens,  and  many  champions  will  be  found  in 
the  field.  I  will  not  attempt  to  decide  whether 
he  should  wish,  as  Mr.  Wells,  to  figure  all  the 
world,  or  as  Mr.  Bennett,  to  take  a  section ; 
probably  the  ideal  is  the  mean.  But  doubtless 
the  novelist  should  select  among  the  particular 
that  which  has  an  application  to  the  general, 
and  it  may  safely  be  said  that,  if  Mr.  Lawrence 
errs  at  all,  it  is  in  selecting  such  particular  as 
has  not  invariably  a  universal  application. 

Mr.  Lawrence  lays  himself  open  to  this 
criticism  in  a  work  such  as  "Sons  and  Lovers  ", 
because  it  has  a  conscious  general  scope,  but 
in  "The  Trespasser"  his  conception  is  of  lesser 
compass.  The  book  holds  a  more  minute  psy- 
chological intention.  That  Sigmund  should 
leave  his  wife  for  another  love  and  find  himself 
driven  to  his  death  by  an  intolerable  conflict 
between  his  desire,  the  love  he  bears  his  chil- 
dren, and  the  consciousness  of  his  outlawry, 
should  have  made  a  great  book.  But  this  one 

81 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


of  Mr.  Lawrence's  novels  fails  because  the 
author  needs  a  wide  sphere  within  which  the 
particular  can  evolve :  he  is  clamouring  within 
the  narrow  limits  of  his  incident ;  Sigmund  ap- 
pears small  and  weak,  unredeemed  by  even  a 
flash  of  heroism :  his  discontented  wife,  her 
self-righteous  child,  hold  their  own  views,  and 
not  enough  those  of  the  world  which  contains 
them.  An  amazing  charge  to  make  against  a 
novelist,  that  his  persons  are  too  much  persons ! 
But  persons  must  partly  be  types,  or  else  they 
become  monsters. 

It  would  be  very  surprising  if  Mr.  Lawrence 
were  not  a  poet  in  verse  as  well  as  in  prose,  if 
he  did  not  sing  when  addressing  his  love : 

"Coimng  up  your  auburn  hair 

In  a  puritan  fillet,  a  chaste  white  snare 
To  catch  and  keep  me  with  you  there 
So  far  away." 

But  a  poet  he  is  much  more  than  a  rebel,  and 
that  distinguishes  him  from  the  realists  who 
have  won  fame  by  seeing  the  dunghill  very 
well,  and  not  at  all  the  spreading  chestnut  tree 
above.  Though  he  select  from  the  world,  he  is 

to 


THREE  YOUNG  NOVELISTS 


greedy  for  its  beauty,  so  greedy  that  from  all  it 
has  to  give,  flower,  beast,  woman,  he  begs  more : 

"You,  Helen,  who  see  the  stars 

As  mistletoe  berries  burning  in  a  black  tree, 
You  surely,  seeing  I  am  a  bowl  of  kisses, 
Should  put  your  mouth  to  mine  and  drink 
of  me."" 

"  Helen,  you  let  my  kisses  steam 

Wasteful  into  the  night's  black  nostrils; 

drink 
Me  up,  I  pray;    oh,  you  who  are  Night's 

Bacchante, 

How   can  you  from  my  bowl    of    kisses 
shrink!" 

I  cannot,  having  no  faith  in  my  power  to 
judge  poetry,  proclaim  Mr.  Lawrence  to  Par- 
nassus, but  I  doubt  whether  such  cries  as  these, 
where  an  urgent  wistfulness  mingles  in  tender 
neighbourhood  with  joy  and  pain  together 
coupled,  can  remain  unheard. 

And  so  it  seems  strange  to  find  in  Mr.  Law- 
rence activities  alien  a  little  to  such  verses  as 
these,  to  have  to  say  that  he  is  also  an  authori- 
tative critic  of  German  literature,  and  the 
author  of  a  prose  drama  of  colliery  life.  More 

83 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


gladly  would  I  think  of  him  always  as  more 
remote  from  the  stirrings  of  common  men, 
forging  and  nursing  his  dreams.  For  dreams 
they  are,  and  they  will  menace  the  realities  of 
his  future  if  he  cannot  "breathe  upon  his  star 
and  detach  its  wings."  It  is  not  only  the 
dragon  of  autobiography  that  threatens  him. 
It  is  true  that  so  far  he  has  written  mainly  of 
himself,  of  the  world  in  intimate  relation  with 
himself,  for  that  every  writer  must  do  a  little ; 
but  he  has  followed  his  life  so  very  closely,  so 
often  photographed  his  own  emotions,  that  un- 
less life  holds  for  him  many  more  adventures, 
and  unless  he  can  retain  the  power  to  give 
minor  incident  individual  quality,  he  may  find 
himself  written  out.  For  Mr.  Lawrence  has 
not  what  is  called  ideas.  He  is  stimulated  by 
the  eternal  rather  than  by  the  fugitive;  the 
fact  of  the  day  has  little  significance  for  him; 
thus,  if  he  does  not  renew  himself,  he  may  be- 
come monotonous,  or  he  may  cede  to  his  more 
dangerous  tendency  to  emphasise  overmuch. 
He  may  develop  his  illusion  of  culture  among 
the  vulgar  until  it  is  incredible ;  he  may  be 

84 


THREE  YOUNG  NOVELISTS 


seduced  by  the  love  he  bears  nature  and  its 
throbbings  into  allowing  his  art  to  dominate 
him.  Already  his  form  is  often  turgid,  amen- 
able to  no  discipline,  tends  to  lead  him  astray. 
He  sees  too  much,  feels  significances  greater  than 
the  actual;  with  arms  that  are  too  short,  be- 
cause only  human,  he  strives  to  embrace  the 
soul  of  man.  This  is  exemplified  in  his  last 
novel,  "The  Rainbow",  of  which  little  need  be 
said,  partly  because  it  has  been  suppressed, 
and  mainly  because  it  is  a  bad  book.  It  is  the 
story  of  several  generations  of  people  so  exces- 
sive sexually  as  to  seem  repulsive.  With  dread- 
ful monotony  the  women  exhibit  riotous  desire, 
the  men  slow  cruelty,  ugly  sensuality;  they 
come  together  in  the  illusion  of  love  and  clasp 
hatred  within  their  joined  arms.  As  in  "Sons 
and  Lovers",  but  with  greater  exaggeration, 
Mr.  Lawrence  detects  hate  in  love,  which  is 
not  his  invention,  but  he  magnifies  it  into 
untruth.  His  intensity  of  feeling  has  run  away 
with  him,  caused  him  to  make  particular  people 
into  monsters  that  mean  as  little  to  us,  so  sen- 
sually crude,  so  flimsily  philosophical  are  they, 

85 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


as  any  Medusa,  Medea,  or  Klytemnestra. 
"The  Rainbow",  as  also  some  of  Mr.  Lawrence's 
verse,  is  the  fruit  of  personal  angers  and 
hatreds ;  it  was  born  in  one  of  his  bad  periods 
from  which  he  must  soon  rescue  himself.  If 
he  cannot,  then  the  early  hopes  he  aroused 
cannot  endure,  and  he  must  sink  into  literary 
neurasthenia. 


AMBER  REEVES 

"I  don't  agree  with  you  at  all."  As  she 
spoke  I  felt  that  Miss  Amber  Reeves  would 
have  greeted  as  defiantly  the  converse  of  my 
proposition.  She  stood  in  a  large  garden  on 
Campden  Hill,  where  one  of  those  pre-war  at 
homes  was  proceeding,  her  effect  heightened  by 
Mr.  Ford  Madox  Hueffer's  weary  polish,  and 
the  burning  twilight  of  Miss  May  Sinclair. 
Not  far  off  Mr.  Wyndham  Lewis  was  languid, 
and  Mr.  Gilbert  Carman  eloquently  silent. 
Miss  Violet  Hunt,  rather  mischievous,  talked 
to  Mr.  Edgar  Jepson,  who  obviously  lay  in 
ambush,  preparing  to  slay  an  idealist,  presum- 

86 


THREE  YOUNG  NOVELISTS 


ably  Sir  Rabindranath  Tagore.  I  felt  very 
mild  near  this  young  lady,  so  dark  in  the  white 
frock  of  simplicity  or  artifice,  with  broad  cheeks 
that  recalled  the  rattlesnake,  soft  cheeks 
tinted  rather  like  a  tea  rose,  with  long,  dark 
eyes,  wicked,  aggressive,  and  yet  laughing.  I 
felt  very  old  —  well  over  thirty.  For  Miss 
Reeves  had  just  come  down  from  Newnham 
and,  indeed,  that  afternoon  she  was  still  com- 
ing down  —  on  a  toboggan.  When  I  met  her 
the  other  day  she  said:  "Well,  perhaps  you 
are  right."  It's  queer  how  one  changes ! 

She  was  about  twenty-three,  and  that  is  not 
so  long  ago;  she  was  still  the  child  who  has 
been  "brought  up  pious",  attended  Sunday 
school  and  felt  a  peculiar  property  in  God. 
Daughter  of  a  New  Zealand  Cabinet  Minister 
and  of  a  mother  so  rich  in  energy  that  she 
turned  to  suffrage  the  scholarly  Mr.  Pember 
Reeves,  Miss  Amber  Reeves  was  a  spoilt  child. 
She  was  also  the  child  of  a  principle,  had  been 
sent  to  Kensington  High  School  to  learn  to  be 
democratic  and  meet  the  butcher's  daughter. 
She  had  been  to  Newnham  too,  taken  up  social- 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


ism,  climbed  a  drain  pipe,  and  been  occasionally 
sought  in  marriage.  At  ten  she  had  written 
poems  and  plays,  then  fortunately  gave  up 
literature  and,  as  a  sponge  flung  into  the  river 
of  life,  took  in  people  as  they  were,  arrived  at 
the  maxim  that  things  do  not  matter,  but  only 
the  people  who  do  them.  A  last  attempt  to 
organise  her  took  place  in  the  London  School  of 
Economics,  where  she  was  to  write  a  thesis ;  one 
sometimes  suspects  that  she  never  got  over  it. 

This  is  not  quite  just,  for  she  is  changed. 
Not  hostile  now,  but  understanding,  interested 
in  peculiarities  as  a  magpie  collecting  spoons. 
Without  much  illusion,  though ;  her  novels  are 
the  work  of  a  faintly  cynical  Mark  Tapley. 

She  is  driven  to  mimic  the  ordinary  people 
whom  she  cannot  help  loving,  who  are  not  as 
herself,  yet  whom  she  forgives  because  they 
amuse  her.  She  is  still  the  rattlesnake  of  gold 
and  rose,  but  (zoological  originality)  one  thinks 
also  of  an  Italian  greyhound  with  folded  paws, 
or  a  furred  creature  of  the  bush  that  lurks  and 
watches  with  eyes  mischievous  rather  than 

cruel. 

88 


THREE  YOUNG  NOVELISTS 


On  reading  this  over  again,  I  discover  that 
she  has  got  over  the  London  School  of  Eco- 
nomics, though  her  first  two  books  showed 
heavy  the  brand  of  Clare  Market.  Miss  Amber 
Reeves  started  out  to  do  good,  but  has  fortu- 
nately repented.  She  has  not  written  many 
novels,  only  three  in  five  years,  an  enviable 
record,  and  they  were  good  novels,  with  faults 
that  are  not  those  of  Mrs.  Barclay  or  of  Mr. 
Hall  Caine.  Over  every  chapter  the  Blue 
Book  hovered.  Her  first  novel,  "The  Reward 
of  Virtue",  exhibited  the  profound  hopelessness 
of  youth.  For  Evelyn  Baker,  daughter  of  a 
mother  who  was  glad  she  was  a  girl  because 
"girls  are  so  much  easier",  was  doomed  to  lead 
the  stupid  life.  Plump,  handsome,  fond  of 
pink,  she  lived  in  Netting  Hill,  went  to  dances, 
loved  the  artists,  and  married  the  merchant, 
knew  she  did  not  love  the  merchant  and  went 
on  living  with  him ;  she  took  to  good  works, 
grew  tired  of  them,  and  gave  birth  to  a  girl 
child,  thanking  fate  because  "girls  are  so  much 
easier."  The  story  of  Evelyn  is  so  much  the 
story  of  everybody  that  it  seems  difficult  to 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


believe  it  is  the  story  of  anybody.  But  it  is. 
"The  Reward  of  Virtue"  is  a  remarkable  piece 
of  realism,  and  it  is  evidence  of  taste  in  a  first 
novel  to  choose  a  stupid  heroine,  and  not  one 
who  plays  Vincent  d'Indy  and  marries  some- 
body called  Hugo. 

In  that  book  Miss  Amber  Reeves  indicated 
accomplishment,  but  this  was  rather  slight; 
only  in  her  second  novel,  "A  Lady  and  Her 
Husband",  was  she  to  develop  her  highest 
quality :  the  understanding  of  the  ordinary 
man.  (All  young  women  novelists  understand 
the  artist,  for  nobody  does;  the  man  they 
never  understand  is  the  one  who  spends  fifty 
years  successfully  paying  bills.)  The  ordinary 
man  is  Mr.  Heyham,  who  runs  tea  shops  and 
easily  controls  a  handsome  wife  "of  forty-five, 
while  he  fails  to  control  Fabian  daughters  and 
a  painfully  educated  son.  He  runs  his  tea 
shops  for  profit,  while  Mrs.  Heyham,  at  forty- 
five,  comes  to  the  unexpected  view  that  he 
should  run  them  for  the  good  of  his  girls. 
There  is  a  revolution  in  Hampstead  when  she 
discovers  that  Mr.  Heyham  does  not,  for  the 

90 


THREE  YOUNG  NOVELISTS 


girls  are  sweated;  worse  still,  she  sees  that  to 
pay  them  better  will  not  help  much,  for  extra 
wages  will  not  mean  more  food  but  only  more 
hats.  They  are  all  vivid,  —  the  hard,  lucid 
daughters,  the  soft  and  illogical  Mrs.  Heyham, 
and  especially  Mr.  Heyham,  kindly,  loving, 
generous,  yet  capable  of  every  beastliness  while 
maintaining  his  faith  in  his  own  rectitude.  Mr. 
Heyham  is  a  triumph,  for  he  is  just  everybody ; 
he  is  "the  man  with  whose  experiences  women 
are  trained  to  sympathise  while  he  is  not 
trained  to  sympathise  with  theirs."  He  is  the 
ordinary,  desirous  man,  the  male.  Listen  to 
this  analysis  of  man:  "He  has  a  need  to  im- 
press himself  on  the  world  he  finds  outside 
him,  an  impulse  that  drives  him  to  achieve  his 
ends  recklessly,  ruthlessly,  through  any  depth 
of  suffering  and  conflict  ...  it  is  just  by 
means  of  the  qualities  that  are  often  so  irritat- 
ing, their  tiresome  restlessness,  their  curiosity, 
their  disregard  for  security,  for  seemliness,  even 
for  life  itself,  that  men  have  mastered  the 
world  and  filled  it  with  the  wealth  of  civilisa- 
tion. It  is  after  this  foolish,  disorganised 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


fashion  of  theirs,  each  of  them  —  difficult, 
touchy  creatures  —  busy  with  his  personal 
ambitions,  that  they  have  armed  the  race  with 
science,  dignified  it  with  art  —  one  can  take 
men  lightly  but  one  cannot  take  lightly  the 
things  that  men  have  done." 

That  sort  of  man  sweats  his  waitresses  be- 
cause such  is  his  duty  to'  the  shareholders. 
It  is  in  this  sort  of  man,  Mr.  Heyham,  who 
wants  more  money,  Edward  Day,  the  prig  who 
hates  spending  it,  that  Miss  Amber  Reeves 
realises  herself.  Analysis  rather  than  evoca- 
tion is  her  mission ;  she  does  not  as  a  rule 
seek  beauty,  and  when  she  strives,  as  in  her 
last  novel,  "Helen  in  Love",  where  a  cheap 
little  minx  is  kissed  on  the  beach  and  is  thus 
inspired,  Miss  Amber  Reeves  fails  to  achieve 
beauty  in  people ;  she  achieves  principally 
affectation.  Beauty  is  not  her  metier;  irony 
and  pity  are  nearer  to  her,  which  is  not  so  bad 
if  we  reflect  that  such  is  the  motto  of  Anatole 
France.  Oh !  she  is  no  mocking  literary 
sprite,  as  the  Frenchman,  nor  has  she  his  graces ; 
she  is  somewhat  tainted  by  the  seriousness  of 

92 


THREE  YOUNG  NOVELISTS 


life,  but  she  has  this  to  distinguish  her  from  her 
fellows :  she  can  achieve  laughter  without  hatred. 

One  should  not,  however,  dismiss  in  a  few 
words  this  latest  novel.  One  can  disregard  the 
excellent  picture  of  the  lower-middle-class  family 
from  which  Helen  springs,  its  circumscribed 
nastiness,  its  vulgar  pleasure  in  appearances, 
for  Miss  Amber  Reeves  has  done  as  good  work 
before.  But  one  must  observe  her  new  im- 
pulse towards  the  rich,  idle,  cultured  people, 
whom  she  idealises  so  that  they  appear  as  worn 
ornaments  of  silver-gilt.  It  seems  that  she  is 
reacting  against  indignation,  that  she  is  turn- 
ing away  from  social  reform  towards  the  caste 
that  has  achieved  a  corner  in  graces.  It  may 
be  that  she  has  come  to  think  the  world  incur- 
able and  wishes  to  retire  as  an  anchorite  — 
only  she  retires  to  Capua :  this  is  not  good,  for 
any  withdrawal  into  a  selected  atmosphere 
implies  that  criticism  of  this  atmosphere  is  sus- 
pended. Nothing  so  swiftly  as  that  kills 
virility  in  literature. 

But  even  so,  Miss  Amber  Reeves  distinguishes 
herself  from  her  immediate  rivals,  Miss  Viola 

93 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


Meynell,  Miss  Bridget  Maclagan,  Miss  Sheila 
Kaye-Smith,  Miss  Katherine  Gerould,  by  an 
interest  in  business  and  in  politics.  She  really 
knows  what  is  a  limited  liability  company  or  an 
issue  warrant.  She  is  not  restricted  to  love, 
but  embraces  such  problems  as  money,  rank, 
science,  class  habits,  which  serve  or  destroy 
love.  She  finds  her  way  in  the  modern  tangle 
where  emotion  and  cupidity  trundle  together 
on  a  dusty  road.  She  is  not  always  just,  but 
she  is  usually  judicial.  Her  men  are  rather 
gross  instead  of  strong;  she  likes  them,  she 
tolerates  them ;  they  are  altogether  brutes  and 
"poor  dears."  But  then  we  are  most  of  us  a 
little  like  that. 

3 
SHEILA  KAYE-SMITH 

I  do  not  know  whether  this  is  a  compliment, 
but  I  should  not  be  surprised  if  a  reader  of,  say 
"Starbrace",  or  "Sussex  Gorse",  were  to  think 
that  Sheila  Kaye-Smith  is  the  pen-name  of  a 
man.  Just  as  one  suspects  those  racy  tales  of 
guardsmen,  signed  "Joseph  Brown"  or  "George 

94 


THREE  YOUNG  NOVELISTS 


Kerr"  of  originating  from  some  scented  boudoir, 
so  does  one  hesitate  before  the  virility,  the  cog- 
nisance of  oath  and  beer,  of  rotating  crop, 
sweating  horse,  account  book,  vote,  and  snicker- 
snee that  Sheila  Kaye-Smith  exhibits  in  all  her 
novels.  This  is  broader,  deeper  than  the  work 
of  the  women  novelists  of  to-day,  who,  with  the 
exception  of  Amber  Reeves,  are  confined  in  a 
circle  of  eternally  compounding  pallid  or  purple 
loves.  One  side  of  her  work  notably  surprises, 
and  that  is  the  direction  of  her  thoughts  away 
from  women,  their  great  and  little  griefs,  to- 
wards men  and  the  glory  of  their  combat  against 
fate.  Sheila  Kaye-Smith  is  more  than  any  of 
her  rivals  the  true  novelist :  the  showman  of 
life. 

Yet  she  is  a  woman.  You  will  imagine  her 
as  seeming  small,  but  not  so ;  very  thin,  with  a 
grace  all  made  of  quiescence,  her  eyes  grey  and 
retracted  a  little,  as  if  always  in  pain  because 
man  is  not  so  beautiful  as  the  earth  that  bore 
him,  because  he  fails  in  idealism,  falls  away 
from  his  hopes,  and  cannot  march  but  only 
shamble  from  one  eternity  into  another.  There 

95 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


is  in  her  a  sort  of  cosmic  choler  restrained  by  a 
Keltic  pride  that  is  ready  to  pretend  a  world 
made  up  of  rates  and  taxes  and  the  nine-two 
train  to  London  Bridge.  Afire  within,  she  will 
not  allow  herself  to  "commit  melodrama."  In 
"Isle  of  Thorns"  her  heroine,  Sally  Odiarne,  so 
describes  her  attempt  to  murder  her  lover,  and 
I  like  to  think  of  Sheila  Kaye-Smith's  will 
leashing  the  passion  that  strains.  I  like  even 
more  to  think  of  the  same  will  giving  rein  to 
anger,  of  a  converse  cry:  "Commit  melo- 
drama !  I  jolly  well  shall !  I'm  justabout  sick 
of  things!" 

"Justabout!"  That  word,  free-scattered  in 
the  speech  of  her  rustics,  is  all  Sussex.  For 
Sheila  Kaye-Smith  has  given  expression  to  the 
county  that  from  the  Weald  spreads  green- 
breasted  to  meet  the  green  sea.  In  all  the 
novels  is  the  slow  Sussex  speech,  dotted  with  the 
kindly  "surelye",  the  superlative  "unaccount- 
able" ;  women  are  "praaper",  ladies  "valiant", 
troubles  "tedious."  It  has  colour,  it  is  true 
English,  unstained  of  Cockneyism  and  Ameri- 
can. It  is  the  speech  of  the  oasthouse,  of  the 

96 


THREE  YOUNG  NOVELISTS 


cottage  on  the  marsh,  of  the  forester's  hut  in 
Udimore  Wood,  where  sings  the  lark  and 
rivulets  flow  like  needles  through  the  moss. 

A  ssez  de  litter ature  !  Sheila  Kaye-Smith  is  not 
a  painter,  even  though  with  dew  diamonds  the 
thornbush  she  spangle.  Her  Sussex  is  male  :  it 
is  not  the  desiccated  Sussex  of  the  modern 
novelist,  but  the  Sussex  of  the  smuggler,  of  the 
Methodist,  the  squire;  the  Sussex  where  men 
sweat  and  read  no  books.  Old  Sussex,  and  the 
Sussex  of  to-day,  which  some  think  was  created 
by  the  L.B.  &  S.C.  Railway,  she  loves  them 
both,  and  in  both  has  found  consolation,  but  I 
think  she  loves  best  the  old.  It  was  old 
Sussex  made  her  first  novel,  "The  Tramping 
Methodist."  Old  Sussex  bred  its  hero,  Hum- 
phrey Lyte.  He  was  a  picaresque  hero,  the 
young  rebel,  for  he  grew  enmeshed  in  murder 
and  in  love,  in  the  toils  of  what  England  called 
justice  in  days  when  the  Regent  w^ent  to 
Brighton.  But  Lyte  does  not  reveal  Sheila 
Kaye-Smith  as  does  "Starbrace."  Here  is  the 
apologia  for  the  rebel :  Starbrace,  the  son  of  a 
poor  and  disgraced  man,  will  not  eat  the  bread 

97 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


of  slavery  at  his  grandfather's  price.  You 
will  imagine  the  old  man  confronted  with  this 
boy,  of  gentle  blood  but  brought  up  as  a 
labourer's  son,  hot,  unruly,  lusting  for  the  free- 
dom of  the  wet  earth.  Starbrace  is  a  fool,  dis- 
obedient ;  he  is  to  be  flogged.  He  escapes  among 
the  smugglers  on  Winchelsea  marsh,  to  the  wild 
world  of  the  mid-eighteenth  century.  It  is  the 
world  of  fighting,  and  of  riding,  of  blood,  of 
excisemen,  of  the  "rum  pads"  and  their  mis- 
tresses, their  dicing  and  their  death.  Despite 
his  beloved,  Theodora  Straightway,  lady  who 
fain  would  have  him  gentleman,  Starbrace  must 
ride  away  upon  his  panting  horse,  Pharisee. 
Love  as  he  may,  he  cannot  live  like  a  rabbit  in 
a  hutch ;  he  must  have  danger,  be  taken,  cast 
into  a  cell,  be  released  to  die  by  the  side  of 
Pharisee,  charging  the  Pretender's  bodyguard 
at  Prestonpans.  All  this  is  fine,  for  she  has 
the  secret  of  the  historical  novel ;  to  show  not 
the  things  that  have  changed,  but  those  which 
have  not. 

"Starbrace"  is,  perhaps,  Sheila  Kaye-Smith's 
most  brilliant  flight,  but  not  her  most  sustained. 

98 


THREE  YOUNG  NOVELISTS 


She  has  had  other  adventures  in  literature, 
such  as  "Isle  of  Thorns",  where  Sally  Odiarne 
wanders  with  Stanger's  travelling  show,  hope- 
lessly entangled  in  her  loves,  unable  to  seize 
happiness,  unable  to  give  herself  to  the  tender 
Raphael,  bound  to  good-tempered,  sensual 
Andy,  until  at  last  she  must  kill  Andy  to  get 
free,  kill  him  to  escape  to  the  sea  and  die. 
But  she  finds  God : 

"She  had  come  out  to  seek  death,  and  had 
found  life.  Who  can  stand  against  life,  the 
green  sea  that  tumbles  round  one's  limbs  and 
tears  up  like  matchwood  the  breakwaters  one 
has  built?  There,  kneeling  in  the  surf  and 
spray,  Sally  surrendered  to  life." 

Sheila  Kaye-Smith  has  not  surrendered  to 
life,  though  the  weakness  of  her  may  be  found 
in  another  book,  "Three  Against  the  World", 
where  the  worthless  Furlonger  family  can  but 
writhe  as  worms  drying  in  the  sun.  The 
vagary  of  her  mind  is  in  such  work  as  criticism : 
she  has  published  a  study  of  John  Galsworthy, 
which  is  judicial,  though  not  inspired.  But 
she  was  destined  for  finer  tasks.  Already  in 

99 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


"Spell  Land",  the  story  of  a  Sussex  farm  where 
lived  two  people,  driven  out  of  the  village  be- 
cause they  loved  unwed,  she  had  given  a  hint 
of  her  power  to  see  not  only  man  but  the  earth. 
She  has  almost  stated  herself  in  "  Sussex  Gorse." 
I  have  read  many  reviews  of  this  book ;  I 
am  tired  of  being  told  it  is  "epic."  It  is  not 
quite ;  it  has  all  the  grace  that  Zola  lacked  in 
"La  Terre",  but  if  the  beauty  is  anything  it  is 
Virgilian,  not  Homeric.  The  scheme  is  im- 
mense, the  life  of  Reuben  Backfield,  of  Odiam, 
inspired  in  early  youth  with  the  determination 
to  possess  Boarzell,  the  common  grown  with 
gorse  and  firs,  the  fierce  land  of  marl  and  shards 
where  naught  save  gorse  could  live.  The  open- 
ing is  a  riot,  for  the  Enclosures  Act  is  in  force, 
and  the  squire  is  seizing  the  people's  land.  In 
that  moment  is  born  Reuben's  desire ;  Boarzell 
shall  be  his.  He  buys  some  acres,  and  his 
struggle  is  frightful ;  you  see  his  muscles  bulg- 
ing in  his  blue  shirt,  you  smell  his  sweat,  you 
hear  the  ploughshare  gripped  with  the  stones, 
teeth  biting  teeth.  For  Boarzell  Common  is 
old,  crafty  and  savage,  and  would  foil  man. 

100 


THREE  YOUNG  NOVELISTS 


Reuben  is  not  foiled ;  he  can  bear  all  things,  so 
can  dare  all  things.  He  buys  more  land ;  there 
shall  be  on  his  farm  no  pleasure  so  that  he  may 
have  money  to  crush  Boarzell.  His  brother, 
Harry,  is  struck  while  Reuben  blows  up  the 
enemy  trees,  and  haunts  his  life,  a  horrible,  idiot 
figure ;  his  wife,  Naomi,  ground  down  by  forced 
child-bearing  (for  Boarzell  needs  men  and 
Reuben  sons)  dies.  His  six  sons,  devoid  of  the 
money  Boarzell  takes,  leave  him ;  one  becomes 
a  thief,  another  a  sailor,  another  a  sot  in  Lon- 
don, another  a  success ;  all  leave  him,  even  his 
daughters ;  one  to  marry  a  hated  rival  farmer, 
one  to  love  because  Reuben  forbade  love,  and 
to  end  on  the  streets.  He  loses  all,  he  loses  his 
pretty  second  wife,  he  loses  Alice  Jury  whom 
alone  he  loved,  he  loses  the  sons  that  Rose  gave 
him.  He  gives  all  to  Boarzell,  to  fighting  it  for 
seventy  years,  sometimes  victor,  sometimes 
crushed,  for  Boarzell  is  evil  and  fierce : 

"It  lay  in  a  great  hush,  a  great  solitude,  a 
quiet  beast  of  power  and  mystery.  It  seemed 
to  call  to  him  through  the  twilight  like  a  love 
forsaken.  There  it  lay :  Boarzell  —  strong, 


IOI 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


beautiful,  desired,  untamed,  still  his  hope,  still 
his  battle." 

There  are  faults,  here  and  there,  degraded 
cliches;  Sheila  Kaye-Smith  loves  the  stars  too 
well,  and  often  indulges  in  horrid  astronomic 
orgies;  there  is  not  enough  actual  combat 
with  the  earth;  the  author  intervenes,  points 
to  the  combat  instead  of  leaving  at  grips  the 
two  beasts,  Reuben  and  Boarzell.  She  has  not 
quite  touched  the  epic,  yet  makes  us  want  to 
resemble  the  hero,  fierce,  cruel,  but  great  when 
old  and  alone,  still  indomitable.  And  one  won- 
ders what  she  will  do,  what  she  will  be.  There 
are  lines  in  her  poems,  "Willow's  Forge",  that 
prophesy ;  the  moment  may  be  enough : 

"When  the  last  constellations  faint  and  fall, 
When  the  last  planets  burst  in  fiery  foam, 
When  all  the  winds  have  sunk  asleep,  when  all 
The    worn    way-weary    comets    have    come 

home  — 

When  past  and  present  and  the  future  flee, 
My  moment  lives !" 

She  may  strive  no  more,  as  she  proposes  to 
the  seeker  in  "The  Counsel  of  Gilgamesh" : 

IO2 


THREE  YOUNG  NOVELISTS 


"Why  wander  round,  Gilgamesh? 

Why  vainly  wander  round? 
What  canst  thou  find,  O  seeker, 

Which  hath  not  long  been  found  ? 
What  canst  thou  know,  0  scholar, 

Which  hath  not  long  been  known  ? 
What  canst  thou  have,  O  spoiler, 

Which  dead  men  did  not  own  ?  " 

But  I  do  not  think  so.  I  do  not  know  whether 
she  will  be  great.  It  is  enough  that  to-day  she 
is  already  alone. 


103 


IV 
FORM   AND   THE  NOVEL 

EVERY  now  and  then  a  reviewer,  recovering 
the  enthusiasm  of  a  critic,  discovers  that  the 
English  novel  has  lost  its  form,  that  the  men 
who  to-day,  a  little  ineffectually,  bid  for  im- 
mortality, are  burning  the  gods  they  once 
worshipped.  They  declare  that  the  novel, 
because  it  is  no  longer  a  story  travelling  har- 
moniously from  a  beginning  towards  a  middle 
and  an  end,  is  not  a  novel  at  all,  that  it  is  no 
more  than  a  platform  where  self-expression  has 
given  place  to  self -proclamation.  And  some- 
times, a  little  more  hopefully,  they  venture  to 
prophesy  that  soon  the  proud  Sicambrian  will 
worship  the  gods  that  he  burnt. 

I  suspect  that  this  classic  revival  is  not  very 
likely  to  come  about.  True,  some  writers, 
to-day  in  their  cradles,  may  yet  emulate  Flau- 

104 


FORM  AND  THE  NOVEL 


bert,  but  they  will  not  be  Flaubert.  They  may 
take  something  of  his  essence  and  blend  it  with 
their  own ;  but  that  will  create  a  new  essence, 
for  literature  does  not  travel  in  a  circle.  Rather 
it  travels  along  a  cycloid,  bending  back  upon 
itself,  following  the  movement  of  man.  Every- 
thing in  the  world  we  inhabit  conspires  to  alter 
in  the  mirror  of  literature  the  picture  it  reflects : 
haste,  luxury,  hysterical  sensuousness,  race- 
optimism  and  race-despair.  And  notably  pub- 
licity, the  attitude  of  the  Press.  For  the  time 
has  gone  when  novels  were  written  for  young 
ladies,  and  told  the  placid  love  of  Edwin  and 
Angeline ;  nowadays  the  novel,  growing  am- 
bitious, lays  hands  upon  science,  commerce, 
philosophy :  we  write  less  of  moated  granges, 
more  of  tea  shops  and  advertising  agencies,  for 
the  Press  is  teaching  the  people  to  look  to 
the  novel  for  a  cosmic  picture  of  the  day,  for 
a  cosmic  commentary. 

Evidently  it  was  not  always  so.     Flaubert, 

de  Maupassant,  Butler,  Tolstoy  (who  are  not 

a  company  of  peers),  aspired  mainly  "to  see 

life  sanely  and  to  see  it  whole."    Because  they 

105 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


lived  in  days  of  lesser  social  complexity,  eco- 
nomically speaking,  they  were  able  to  use  a 
purely  narrative  style,  the  only  notable  living 
exponent  of  which  is  Mr.  Thomas  Hardy.  But 
we,  less  fortunate  perhaps,  confronted  with 
new  facts,  the  factory  system,  popular  educa- 
tion, religious  unrest,  pictorial  rebellion,  must 
adapt  ourselves  and  our  books  to  the  new  spirit. 
I  do  not  pretend  that  the  movement  has  been 
sudden.  Many  years  before  "L'Education 
Sentimentale "  was  written,  Stendhal  had  im- 
ported chaos  (with  genius)  into  the  spacious 
'thirties.  But  Stendhal  was  a  meteor:  Dos- 
toievski  and  Mr.  Romain  Rolland  had  to  come 
to  break  up  the  old  narrative  form,  to  make  the 
road  for  Mr.  Wells  and  for  the  younger  men 
who  attempt,  not  always  successfully,  to  crush 
within  the  covers  of  an  octavo  volume  the  whole 
of  the  globe  spinning  round  its  axis,  to  express 
with  an  attitude  the  philosophy  of  life,  to  preach 
by  gospel  rather  than  by  statement. 

Such  movements  as  these  naturally  breed  a 
reaction,  and  I  confess  that,  when  faced  with 
the  novels  of  the  "young  men",  so  turgid,  so 

1 06 


FORM  AND  THE  NOVEL 


bombastic,  I  turn  longing  eyes  towards  the  still 
waters  of  Turgenev,  sometimes  even  towards 
my  first  influence,  now  long  discarded  —  the 
novels  of  Zola.  Though  the  Zeitgeist  hold  my 
hand  and  bid  me  abandon  my  characters,  for- 
get that  they  should  be  people  like  ourselves, 
living,  loving,  dying,  and  this  enough ;  though 
it  suggest  to  me  that  I  should  analyse  the  eco- 
nomic state,  consider  what  new  world  we  are 
making,  enlist  under  the  banner  of  the  "free 
spirits"  or  of  the  "simple  life",  I  think  I  should 
turn  again  towards  the  old  narrative  simplici- 
ties, towards  the  schedules  of  what  the  hero 
said,  and  of  what  the  vicar  had  in  his  drawing- 
room,  if  I  were  not  conscious  that  form  evolves. 
If  literature  be  at  all  a  living  force  it  must 
evolve  as  much  as  man,  and  more,  if  it  is  to 
lead  him ;  it  must  establish  a  correspondence 
between  itself  and  the  uneasy  souls  for  which 
it  exists.  So  it  is  no  longer  possible  to  content 
ourselves  with  such  as  Jane  Austen ;  we  must 
exploit  ourselves.  Ashamed  as  we  are  of  the 
novel  with  a  purpose,  we  can  no  longer  write 
novels  without  a  purpose.  We  need  to  express 
107 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


the  motion  of  the  world  rather  than  its  contents. 
While  the  older  novelists  were  static,  we  have 
to  be  kinetic :  is  not  the  picture-palace  here  to 
give  us  a  lesson  and  to  remind  us  that  the  wax- 
works which  delighted  our  grandfathers  have 
gone? 

But  evolution  is  not  quite  the  same  thing  as 
revolution.  I  do  believe  that  revolution  is  only 
evolution  in  a  hurry ;  but  revolution  can  be  in 
too  great  a  hurry,  and  cover  itself  with  ridicule. 
When  the  Futurists  propose  to  suppress  the 
adjective,  the  adverb,  the  conjunction,  and  to 
make  of  literature  a  thing  of  "positive  sub- 
stantives" and  "dynamic  verbs"  -when  Mr. 
Peguy  repeats  over  and  over  again  the  same 
sentence  because,  in  his  view,  that  is  how  we 
think  —  we  smile.  We  are  both  right  and 
wrong  to  smile,  for  these  people  express  in  the 
wrong  way  that  which  is  the  right  thing.  The 
modern  novel  has  and  must  have  a  new  signifi- 
cance. It  is  not  enough  that  the  novelist  should 
be  cheery  as  Dickens,  or  genially  cynical  as 
Thackeray,  or  adventurous  as  Fielding.  The 
passions  of  men  —  love,  hunger,  patriotism, 

108 


FORM  AND  THE  NOVEL 


worship  —  all  these  things  must  now  be  shared 
between  the  novelist  and  his  reader.  He  must 
collaborate  with  his  audience  —  emulate  the 
show-girls  in  a  revue,  abandon  the  stage,  and 
come  parading  through  the  stalls.  A  new  pas- 
sion is  born,  and  it  is  a  complex  of  the  old  pas- 
sions; the  novelist  of  to-day  cannot  end  as 
Montaigne,  say  that  he  goes  to  seek  a  great 
perhaps.  He  needs  to  be  more  positive,  to 
aspire  to  know  what  we  are  doing  with  the 
working  class,  with  the  Empire,  the  woman 
question,  and  the  proper  use  of  lentils.  It  is 
this  aspiration  towards  truth  that  breaks  up 
the  old  form :  you  cannot  tell  a  story  in  a 
straightforward  manner  when  you  do  but 
glimpse  it  through  the  veil  of  the  future. 

And  so  it  goes  hard  with  Edwin  and  Angeline. 
We  have  no  more  time  to  tell  that  love;  we 
need  to  break  up  their  simple  story,  to  consider 
whether  they  are  eugenically  fitted  for  each 
other,  and  whether  their  marriage  settlement 
has  a  bearing  upon  national  finance.  Inevitably 
we  become  chaotic ;  the  thread  of  our  story  is 
tangled  in  the  threads  which  bind  the  loves  of 
109 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


all  men.  We  must  state,  moralise,  explain, 
analyse  motives,  because  we  try  to  fit  into  a 
steam  civilization  the  old  horse-plough  of  our 
fathers.  I  do  not  think  that  we  shall  break 
the  old  plough;  now  and  then  we  may  use  it 
upon  sands,  but  there  is  much  good  earth  for 
it  to  turn. 


no 


SINCERITY:  THE  PUBLISHER  AND 
THE  POLICEMAN 

THERE  is  always  much  talk  of  sincerity  in 
literature.  It  is  a  favourite  topic  in  literary 
circles,  but  often  the  argument  sounds  hollow, 
for  English  literature  seldom  attains  sincerity ; 
it  may  never  do  so  until  Englishmen  become 
Russians  or  Frenchmen  which,  in  spite  of  all 
temptations,  they  are  not  likely  to  do. 

Once  upon  a  time  we  had  a  scapegoat  ready, 
the  circulating  libraries,  for  they  made  them- 
selves ridiculous  when  they  banned  "Black 
Sheep"  and  "The  Uncounted  Cost",  while 
every  now  and  then  they  have  prohibited  a 
book  of  artistic  value,  likely  to  lead  astray  the 
mothers  rather  than  the  daughters.  Like  the 
others,  I  foamed  and  fumed  against  the  li- 
braries, who  after  all  were  only  conducting 
their  business  according  to  their  commercial 
in 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


interests ;  like  many  others,  I  set  up  the  idea 
/hat  the  circulating  library  was  a  sort  of  trustee 
for  literature,  and  after  this  coronation  I 
abused  the  library  as  one  unworthy  of  a  crown. 
It  was  rather  unfair,  for  the  conditions  which 
militate  against  the  free  embodiment  of  brute 
facts  into  fiction  form  prevailed  before  the 
Library  Censorship  was  thought  of;  the  li- 
braries have  not  made  public  opinion  but  fol- 
lowed it ;  nowadays  they  slightly  influence  it. 
For  public  opinion  is  not  the  opinion  of  the 
public,  it  is  the  opinion  of  a  minority.  The 
opinion  of  a  minority  makes  the  opinion  of  the 
majority,  because  the  latter  has,  as  a  rule,  no 
opinion  at  all. 

Who  the  censorious  minority  is  I  do  not 
quite  know.  I  have  a  vision  of  a  horrid  con- 
clave made  up  of  the  National  Council  of  Pub- 
lic Morals,  some  shopkeepers  addicted  to  their 
chapel  in  default  of  other  vices,  of  anti-suffra- 
gists who  think  "Ann  Veronica"  dangerous, 
and  such  like  Comstocks;  it  must  number 
some  elderly  ladies  too,  tired  of  converting  the 
stubborn  heathen,  and  I  think  some  bishops, 

112 


SINCERITY:     PUBLISHER    AND    POLICEMAN 

quite  elderly  and  still  more  ladylike;  there 
are  celibates  with  whom  celibacy  has  not 
agreed  and  who  naturally  want  to  serve  out 
the  world;  there  is  everybody  who  in  the 
name  of  duty,  decency,  self-control,  purity, 
and  such  like  catchwords,  has  stuffed  his  ears 
against  the  pipes  of  Pan  with  the  cotton  wool 
of  aggressive  respectability.  A  pretty  con- 
gress, and  like  all  congresses  it  talks  as  abund- 
antly and  as  virulently  as  any  young  novelist. 
The  vocal  opinion  of  these  people  is  well  de- 
scribed in  a  recent  successful  revue:  "To  the 
pure  all  things  are  impure."  Often  of  late  years 
it  has  run  amuck.  Not  long  ago  it  caused  the 
Municipal  Libraries  of  Doncaster  and  Dews- 
bury  to  banish  "Tom  Jones"  and  to  pronounce 
"Westward  Ho!"  unfit  for  devout  Roman 
Catholics;  it  still  spreads  into  the  drama  and 
holds  such  plays  as  "Waste",  "Mrs.  Warren's 
Profession",  "Monna  Vanna"  well  hidden 
under  the  calico  and  red  flannel  of  British 
rectitude ;  it  has  had  its  outbursts  in  picture 
palaces  and  music  halls,  where  it  happened -to 
overlook  the  Salome  dance  and  living  pictures ; 
"3 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


often  it  arouses  uproarious  merriment,  as  on 
the  perfect  days  when  it  cropped  titles  that 
seemed  suggestive  and  caused  the  plays  to  ap- 
pear under  the  more  stimulating  titles  of  "The 
Girl  Who  Went"  —  and  "The  Girl  Who  Lost" 
(I  do  not  remember  what  she  lost,  but  I  pas- 
sionately want  to  know ;  such  are  the  successes 
of  Puritanism). 

It  is  true  that  in  some  directions  Puritanism 
has  recently  weakened.  Plays  long  outcast, 
such  as  "Damaged  Goods",  "Ghosts",  and 
"The  Three  Daughters  of  Monsieur  Dupont" 
have  unshamedly  taken  the  boards,  but  I  fear 
that  this  does  not  exhibit  the  redemption  of 
virtue  by  sin.  If  the  newspapers  had  not  con- 
ducted a  campaign  for  the  protection  of  the 
notoriously  guileless  New  Zealand  soldiers 
against  the  flapper  with  the  hundred  heads 
(every  one  of  them  filled  with  evil),  if  venereal 
disease  had  not  suddenly  become  a  fashionable 
subject,  these  plays  would  still  be  lying  with 
the  other  unborn  in  the  limbo  of  the  Lord 
Chamberlain.  But  Puritanism  has  long  teeth ; 
it  can  still  drive  out  of  politics  our  next  Charles 

114 


SINCERITY:     PUBLISHER   AND    POLICEMAN 

Dilke,  our  next  Parnell,  however  generous  or 
gifted;  it  still  hangs  over  the  Law  Courts, 
where  women  may  be  ordered  out,  or  where 
cases  may  be  heard  in  camera ;  it  still  holds 
some  sway  over  everything  but  private  life, 
where  humanity  recoups  its  public  losses. 

Puritan  opinion  has  therefore  a  broader  face 
of  attack  on  the  novel  than  is  afforded  by  the 
Library  Censorship.  For  the  latter  can  in- 
jure a  book,  but  it  cannot  suppress  it ;  on  the 
whole  banned  books  have  suffered,  but  they 
have  also  benefited  because  many  people  buy 
what  they  cannot  borrow,  and  because  many 
buy  the  books  which  the  Puritans  advertise 
as  unfit  to  read.  (They  are  much  disap- 
pointed, as  a  rule,  unless  they  are  themselves 
Puritans.)  That  buying  class  is  not  very  large, 
but  it  counts,  and  I  suppose  we  must  charitably 
assume  that  the  people  who  post  to  the  book- 
seller to  purchase  the  works  which  the  library 
has  rejected  are  supporters  of  literary  sincerity ; 
we  must  form  our  private  opinion  as  to  that. 
But  whether  the  people  who  buy  the  banned 
book  are  or  are  not  eager  to  obtain  a  dollar's 
"5 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


worth  of  truth,  the  fact  remains  that  they  do 
buy,  that  the  deplorable  authors  do  live,  and 
that  they  do  persist  in  writing  their  regrettable 
novels.  The  libraries  have  not  killed  sincerity ; 
they  have  done  no  more  than  trammel  it.  For 
instance, in  the  well-known  cases  of  "The  Devil's 
Garden",  "Sinister  Street",  and  "The  Woman 
Thou  Gavest  Me",  the  faltering  hesitation  of 
the  circulating  libraries  resulted  in  a  colossal 
advertisement,  of  which  Mr.  Maxwell  and  Mr. 
Compton  Mackenzie  made  the  best,  and  Mr. 
Hall  Caine  of  course  a  little  more.  The  li- 
braries did  not  deprive  of  sustenance  the 
authors  of  "Limehouse  Nights"  and  "Capel 
Sion",  and  in  their  new  spirit  did  not  interfere 
with  Mr.  Galsworthy's  heroine,  in  "Beyond." 
The  assassins  of  sincerity  are  the  publisher 
and  the  policeman.  Dismiss  the  illusion  that 
banned  books  are  bold  and  bad ;  for  the  most 
part  they  are  kindly  and  mild,  silly  beyond  the 
conception  of  Miss  Elinor  Glyn,  beyond  the 
sentimental  limits  of  Mrs.  Barclay;  they  are 
seldom  vicious  in  intent,  and  too  devoid  of 
skill  to  be  vicious  in  achievement.  The  real 

116 


SINCERITY:     PUBLISHER   AND    POLICEMAN 

bold  books  are  unwritten  or  unpublished;  for 
nobody  but  a  fool  would  expect  a  publisher  to 
be  fool  enough  to  publish  them.  There  are, 
it  is  true,  three  or  four  London  publishers  who 
are  not  afraid  of  the  libraries,  but  they  are 
afraid  of  the  police,  and  any  one  who  wishes  to 
test  them  can  offer  them,  for  instance,  a  trans- 
lation of  "Le  Journal  d'une  Femme  de  Cham- 
bre."  The  publisher  is  to  a  certain  extent  a 
human  being;  he  knows  that  works  of  this 
type  (and  this  one  is  masterly)  are  often  works 
of  art ;  he  knows  that  they  are  salable,  and 
that  assured  profits  would  follow  on  publica- 
tion, were  the  books  not  suppressed  by  the 
police.  But  he  does  not  publish  them,  because 
he  also  knows  that  the  police  and  its  backers, 
purity  societies  and  common  informers,  would 
demand  seizure  of  the  stock  after  the  first 
review  and  hurry  to  the  police  court  all  those 
who  had  taken  part  in  the  printing  and  issue 
of  the  works.  As  a  result  many  of  these  books 
are  driven  underground  into  the  vile  atmos- 
phere of  the  vilest  shops ;  some  are  great  works 
of  art;  one  is,  in  the  words  of  Mr.  Anatole 
117 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


France  "minded  to  weep  over  them  with  the 
nine  Muses  for  company."  Need  I  say  more 
than  that  "Madame  B ovary",  the  greatest 
novel  the  world  has  seen,  is  now  being  sold  in 
a  shilling  paper  edition  under  a  cover  which 
shows  Madame  B  ovary  in  a  sort  of  private 
dining  room,  dressed  in  a  chemise,  and  pre- 
paring to  drink  off  a  bumper  of  champagne. 
(Possibly  the  designer  of  this  cover  has  in  his 
mind  sparkling  burgundy.) 

Several  cases  are  fresh  in  my  memory  where 
purity,  living  in  what  Racine  called  "the  fear 
of  God,  sir,  and  of  the  police",  has  intervened 
to  stop  the  circulation  of  a  novel.  One  is  that 
of  "The  Yoke",  a  novel  of  no  particular  merit, 
devoid  of  subversive  teaching,  but  interesting 
because  it  was  frank,  because  it  did  not  por- 
tray love  on  the  lines  of  musical  comedy, 
because  it  faced  the  common  sex  problem  of 
the  middle-aged  spinster  and  the  very  young 
man,  because  it  did  not  ignore  the  peril' which 
everybody  knows  to  be  lurking  within  a  mile 
of  Broadway.  "The  Yoke"  enjoyed  a  large 
sale  at  six  shillings  and  was  not  interfered  with, 

nS 


SINCERITY:     PUBLISHER   AND    POLICEMAN 

presumably  because  those  who  can  afford  six 
shillings  may  be  abandoned  to  the  scarlet 
woman.  It  was  then  published  at  a  shilling. 
Soon  after,  the  secret  combination  of  common 
informer,  purity  group,  and  police  forced  the 
publisher  into  a  police  court,  compelled  him  to 
express  regret  for  the  publication,  and  to 
destroy  all  the  remaining  copies  and  moulds. 
That  is  a  brief  tragedy,  and  it  in  no  wise  in- 
volves the  library  system.  Another  tragedy 
may  be  added.  In  1910  Sudermann's  novel, 
"Das  Hohe  Lied",  was  published  under  the 
title  of  "The  Song  of  Songs."  It  is  not  a 
very  interesting  novel ;  it  is  long,  rather  crude, 
but  it  relates  faithfully  enough  the  career  of  a 
woman  who  lived  by  the  sale  of  herself.  The 
trouble  was  that  she  made  rather  a  success  of 
it,  and  it  was  shown  in  a  few  scenes  that  she 
did  not  always  detest  the  incidents  of  this 
career,  which  is  not  unnatural.  In  December, 
1910,  two  inspectors  from  the  Criminal  Inves- 
tigation Department  called  on  the  publisher 
and  informed  his  manager  that  a  complaint 
had  been  made  against  the  book ;  it  was  de- 
119 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


scribed  as  obscene.  The  officers  apparently 
went  on  to  say  that  their  director,  Sir  Melville 
Macnaghten,  did  not  associate  himself  with 
that  opinion,  but  their  object  was  to  draw  the 
publisher's  attention  to  the  fact  that  a  com- 
plaint had  been  made.  Thereupon,  without 
further  combat,  the  publisher  withdrew  the 
book.  Nobody  can  blame  him;  he  was  not 
in  business  to  fight  battles  of  this  kind,  and  I 
suppose  that  few  British  juries  would  have 
supported  him.  They  would,  more  likely, 
have  given  the  case  against  him  first  and 
tried  to  get  hold  of  a  private  copy  of  the  book 
after,  presumably  to  read  on  Sunday  after- 
noons. The  interesting  part  of  the  business  is 
that  the  accusation  remained  anonymous,  that 
the  police  did  not  associate  itself  with  it,  but 
came  humbly,  helmet  in  hand,  to  convey  the 
displeasure  of  some  secret  somebody  with 
some  secret  something  in  the  book.  And  there 
you  are !  That  is  all  you  need  to  snuff  out  the 
quite  good  work  of  a  novelist  with  a  quite 
good  European  reputation. 
Once  upon  a  time,  I  thought  I  might  myself 

120 


SINCERITY:     PUBLISHER   AND    POLICEMAN 

have  a  taste  of  the  purity  medicine.  In  1910 
I  had  ready  for  publication  a  novel  called  "A 
Bed  of  Roses."  I  placed  it  with  Messrs.  Alston 
Rivers,  Ltd.,  whose  standard  of  respectability 
was  beyond  attachment.  They  read  the  book 
without,  so  far  as  I  remember,  any  ill  effects; 
at  least  I  saw  no  signs  of  corruption  in  the 
managing  director  and  the  secretary;  the 
maidenly  reserve  of  the  lady  shorthand  typist 
seemed  unblemished.  But  some  horrid  in- 
ternal convulsion  must  have  suddenly  occurred 
in  the  firm ;  they  must  have  lost  their  nerve ; 
or  perhaps  my  corrupting  influence  was  gradual 
and  progressive;  at  any  rate,  they  suddenly 
sent  the  book  to  their  legal  adviser,  who  wired 
back  that  it  would  almost  certainly  be  prose- 
cuted. So  the  contract  was  not  signed,  and  if 
I  had  not,  in  those  days,  been  an  enthusiastic 
young  man  who  longed  to  be  prosecuted,  I 
might  never  have  published  the  book  at  all; 
the  moral  pressure  might  have  been  enough  to 
keep  it  down.  But  I  offered  it  to  many  pub- 
lishers, all  of  whom  rejected  it,  at  the  same  time 
asking  whether  some  milder  spring  might  not 

121 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


be  struck  from  the  rock  of  my  imagination, 
until  I  came  across  Mr.  Frank  Palmer,  who 
was  a  brave  man.  I  offered  him  that  book, 
cropped  of  about  seventy  pages,  which  I 
thought  so  true  to  life  that  I  realised  they  must 
cause  offence.  He  accepted  it.  Those  were 
beautiful  times,  and  I  knew  an  exquisite  day 
when  I  decided  to  chance  the  prosecution. 
I  remember  the  bang  of  the  manuscript  as 
it  dropped  into  the  post  box ;  garbling  an 
old  song,  I  thought:  "Good-bye,  good-bye, 
ye  lovely  young  girls,  we're  off  to  Botany 
Bay." 

The  police  treated  me  very  scurvily;  they 
took  no  notice  at  all.  The  book  was  banned  by 
all  libraries,  owing  to  its  alleged  hectic  qualities, 
and  in  due  course  achieved  a  moderate  meas- 
ure of  scandalous  success.  I  tell  this  story  to 
show  that  had  I  been  a  sweet  and  shrink- 
ing soul,  that  if  Mr.  Palmer  had  not  shared  in 
my  audacity,  the  book  would  not  have  been 
published.  We  should  not  have  been  stopped, 
but  we  should  have  been  frightened  off,  and 
this,  I  say,  is  the  force  that  keeps  down  sincere 

122 


SINCERITY:     PUBLISHER   AND    POLICEMAN 

novels,  deep  down  in  the  muddy  depths  of 
their  authors'  imagination. 

Now  and  then  a  publisher  dares,  and  dares 
too  far.  Such  is  the  case  of  "The  Rainbow", 
by  Mr.  •  D.  H.  Lawrence,  where  the  usual 
methods  of  Puritan  terrorism  were  applied, 
where  the  publisher  was  taken  into  court,  and 
made  to  eat  humble  pie,  knowing  that  if  he 
refused  he  must  drink  hemlock.  Certainly 
"The  Rainbow"  was  a  bad  book,  for  it  was  an 
ill-written  book,  a  book  of  hatred  and  desire  — 
but  many  of  us  are  people  of  hatred  and  desire, 
and  I  submit  that  there  is  no  freedom  when  a 
minority  of  one  in  a  nation  of  fifty  millions  is 
hampered  in  the  expression  of  his  feelings. 
More  than  one  opinion  has  been  held  by  one 
man  and  is  now  the  belief  of  all  the  world.  The 
beliefs  of  to-morrow  will  be  slain  if  we  sup- 
press to-day  the  opinion  of  one;  I  would  sur- 
render all  the  rupees  and  virgins  of  Bengal  for 
the  sake  of  the  atom  of  truth  which  may,  in 
another  age,  build  up  immortal  understanding 
in  the  heart  of  man. 

All  this  has  frightened  publishers,  so  that 
123 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


they  will  now  take  no  risks,  and  even  the  shy 
sincerity  of  English  writers  is  turned  away. 
The  public  subserve  the  Puritans,  little  mean 
people  whom  Mr.  Wells  ideally  nicknamed 
" Key-hole",  or  "Snuffles",  little  people  who 
form  "watch  committees"  or  "vigilance  socie- 
ties", who  easily  discover  the  obscene  because 
it  hangs  like  a  film  before  their  eyes,  little 
people  who  keep  the  window  shut.  The  police 
must  obey  or  be  called  corrupt ;  the  courts  are 
ready  to  apply  the  law  severely  rather  than  le- 
niently, for  who  shall  play  devil's  advocate  at 
the  Old  Bailey?  No  wonder  the  publishers  are 
frightened ;  the  combination  of  their  timidity, 
of  truculent  Puritanism,  and  of  a  reluctantly 
vigilant  police  makes  it  almost  impossible  to 
publish  a  sincere  work. 

One  result  is  that  we  are  deprived  of  trans- 
lations of  foreign  novels,  some  of  which  are  of 
the  first  rank.  There  is  "Le  Journal  d'une 
Femme  de  Chambre";  there  is  "Aphrodite", 
the  work  of  M.  Pierre  Lonys,  who  is  an  artist 
in  his  way ;  there  is  Mr.  Boylesve's  delicate,  in- 
wrought "La  Lee. on  d'  '  Amour  dans  un  Pare ' " ; 

124 


SINCERITY:     PUBLISHER   AND    POLICEMAN 

there  is  the  Parisian  mischief  of  M.  Pre- 
vost's  "Lettres  de  Femmes",  the  elegance  of 
M.  Henri  de  Regnier.  "Sanin"  got  through, 
how  I  do  not  know;  I  have  not  read  the 
translation,  and  it  may  very  well  be  that  it 
escaped  only  after  the  translator  had  thickly 
coated  it  with  the  soapsuds  of  English  virtue. 
Small  as  their  chances  may  be,  it  is  a  pity 
that  the  publishers  do  not  adventure.  It  is 
true  that  Mr.  Vizetelly  went  to  gaol  for  publish- 
ing translations  of  Zola's  novels,  but  when  we 
are  told  by  Mr.  George  Moore  that  Mr.  W.  T. 
Stead  confided  to  him  that  the  Vigilance 
Society  considered  the  prosecution  of  "Madame 
B ovary",  it  seems  necessary  again  to  test  the 
law.  For  you  will  observe  that  in  all  the 
cases  quoted  the  publisher  has  not  allowed 
himself  to  be  committed  for  trial;  he  has 
chosen  the  prudent  and  humble  course  of  apolo- 
gising and  withdrawing  the  book,  and  one 
wonders  what  would  happen  if  just  once,  sup- 
ported by  a  common  fund,  a  publisher  were  to 
face  the  Puritans,  let  the  case  go  for  trial,  test 
the  law.  One  wonders  what  the  result  might 
"5 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


not  be  in  the  hands  of,  for  instance,  Sir  John 
Simon.  He  might  win  a  glorious  victory  for 
English  letters ;  he  might  do  away  with  much 
of  the  muckraking  which  is  keeping  English 
letters  in  subjection  because  nobody  dares 
drag  it  out  for  public  exposure  and  combat. 
Until  that  happens  Puritan  influence  is  more 
potent  than  a  score  of  convictions,  for  no 
publisher  knows  what  he  may  do  and  what  he 
may  not ;  prosecution  is  as  effective  in  threat 
as  in  action,  and  I  hope  that  if  ever  this  struggle 
comes  it  will  be  over  some  book  of  mine. 

Let  it  be  clear  that  no  blame  attaches  to  the 
publisher;  he  does  not  trade  under  the  name 
"  Galahad  &  Company  ";  he  knows  that  even 
defeated  Puritans  would  attempt  to  avenge 
their  downfall,  and  malignantly  pursue  all  the 
works  he  issued  in  every  municipal  library. 
But  still  it  is  a  pity  that  no  publisher  will  face 
them;  half  a  dozen  of  our  best  known  pub- 
lishers are  knights :  perhaps  some  day  one  of 
them  will  put  on  his  armour. 

This  secret  terrorism  is  a  national  calamity, 
for  it  procures  the  sterilisation  of  the  English 

126 


SINCERITY:     PUBLISHER    AND    POLICEMAN 

novel.  It  was  always  so,  for  there  is  not  com- 
plete sincerity  in  "Tom  Jones",  or  in  "A  Mum- 
mer's Wife",  even  as  the  word  sincerity  is 
understood  in  England,  and  there  is  little 
nowadays.  We  have  to-day  a  certain  number 
of  fairly  courageous  novelists  whose  works  are 
alluded  to  in  other  chapters,  but  they  are  not 
completely  sincere.  If  they  were  they  would 
not  be  concerned  with  censorships ;  they  would 
not  be  published  at  all.  I  do  not  suggest  that 
they  wish  to  be  insincere,  but  they  cannot 
help  it.  Their  insincerity,  I  suspect,  as  exem- 
plified by  the  avoidance  of  certain  details, 
arises  from  the  necessity  of  that  avoidance ;  it 
arises  also  from  the  habit  of  concealment  and 
evasion  which  a  stupefied  public,  led  by  a  neu- 
rotic faction,  has  imposed  upon  them. 

Our  novelists  openly  discuss  every  feature 
of  social  life,  politics,  religion,  but  they  cast 
over  sex  a  thick  veil  of  ellipse  and  metaphor. 
Thus  Mr.  Onions  suggests,  but  dares  not  name, 
the  disease  a  character  contracts;  Mr.  Law- 
rence leaves  in  some  doubt  the  actual  deed  of 
his  "Trespasser",  while  "H.  H.  Richardson" 
127 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


leaves  to  our  conjectures  the  habits  of  Schilsky. 
(So  do  I,  you  see ;  if  I  were  to  say  exactly  what 
I  mean  it  would  never  do.) 

It  may  be  said  that  all  this  is  not  insincerity, 
and  that  there  is  no  need  to  dwell  upon  what 
the  respectable  call  the  unwholesome,  the  un- 
healthy, the  unnecessary,  but  I  think  we  must 
accept  that  the  bowdlerising  to  which  a  novelist 
subjects  his  own  work  results  in  lopsidedness. 
If  a  novelist  were  to  develop  his  characters 
evenly,  the  three-hundred-page  novel  might 
extend  to  five  hundred ;  the  additional  two 
hundred  pages  would  be  made  up  entirely  of 
the  sex  preoccupations  of  the  characters,  their 
adventures  and  attempts  at  satisfaction.  There 
would  be  as  many  scenes  in  the  bedroom  as 
in  the  drawing-room,  probably  more,  given 
that  human  beings  spend  more  time  in  the 
former  than  in  the  latter  apartment.  There 
would  be  abundant  detail,  detail  that  would 
bring  out  an  intimacy  of  contact,  a  complete- 
ness of  mutual  understanding  which  does  not 
generally  come  about  when  characters  meet 
at  breakfast  or  on  the  golf  course.  The  addi- 

128 


SINCERITY:     PUBLISHER   AXD    POLICEMAN 

tional  pages  would  offer  pictures  of  the  sex 
side  of  the  characters,  and  thus  would  compel 
them  to  come  alive ;  at  present  they  often  fail 
to  come  alive  because  they  develop  only  on 
say  five  sides  out  of  six. 

No  character  in  a  modern  English  novel  has 
been  fully  developed.  Sometimes,  as  in  the 
case  of  Mendel,  of  Jude  the  Obscure,  of  Mark 
Lennan,  of  Gyp  Fiorsen,  one  has  the  impres- 
sion that  they  are  fully  developed  because  the 
book  mainly  describes  their  sex  adventures, 
but  one  could  write  a  thousand  pages  about 
sex  adventures  and  have  done  nothing  but 
produce  a  sentimental  atmosphere.  A  hundred 
kisses  do  not  make  one  kiss,  and  there  is  more 
truth  in  one  page  of  "Madame  Bo  vary"  than 
in  the  shackled  works  of  Mr.  Hardy.  It  is  not 
his  fault,  it  is  a  case  of  —  if  England  but  knew 
—  and,  therefore,  if  Hardy  but  could.  Our 
literary  characters  are  lopsided  because  their 
ordinary  traits  are  fully  portrayed,  analysed 
with  extraordinary  minuteness,  while  their  sex 
life  is  cloaked,  minimised,  or  left  out.  There- 
fore, as  the  ordinary  man  does  indulge  his 
129 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


sexual  proclivities,  as  a  large  proportion  of 
his  thoughts  run  on  sex  if  he  is  a  live  man,  the 
characters  in  modern  novels  are  false.  They 
are  megacephalous  and  emasculate.  If  their 
religious  views,  their  political  opinions,  their 
sporting  tastes  were  whittled  down  as  cruelly 
as  their  sexual  tendencies,  then  the  charac- 
ters would  become  balanced;  they  would  be 
dwarfs,  but  they  would  be  true;  if  all  the 
characteristics  of  men  were  as  faintly  sug- 
gested in  them  as  their  sexual  traits,  the 
persons  that  figure  in  novels  would  simulate 
reality. 

They  would  not  be  reality,  but  they  would  be 
less  untrue  than  they  are  to-day.  This,  how- 
ever, is  merely  theory,  for  it  is  impossible  to 
apply  to  the  novel  the  paradox  that  insincerity 
in  everything  being  better  than  insincerity  in 
one  thing,  it  is  desirable  to  be  insincere  through- 
out. The  paradox  cannot  be  applied  because 
then  a  novel  of  ideas  could  not  be  written; 
shrouded  religious  doubt,  shy  socialism,  sug- 
gested anarchism,  would  reduce  the  length  by 
nine  tenths,  make  of  the  novel  a  short  story. 

130 


SINCERITY:     PUBLISHER   AND    POLICEMAN 

It  would  be  perfectly  balanced  and  perfectly 
insincere ;  aesthetically  sound,  it  would  satisfy 
nobody.  We  should  be  compelled  to  pad  it 
out  with  murder,  theft,  and  arson,  which,  as 
everybody  knows,  are  perfectly  moral  things 
to  write  about. 

It  is  a  cruel  position  for  the  English  novel. 
The  novelist  may  discuss  anything  but  the 
main  preoccupation  of  life.  If  he  describes  the 
city  clerk  he  may  dilate  upon  city  swindles, 
but  he  must  select  warily  from  among  the  city 
clerk's  loves.  The  novelist  knows  these  loves, 
records  them  in  his  mind,  speaks  of  them 
freely,  but  he  does  not  write  them  down.  If 
he  did,  his  publisher  would  go  to  gaol.  For 
this  reason  there  is  no  completely  sincere 
writing.  The  novelist  is  put  into  the  witness 
box,  but  he  is  not  sworn  to  tell  the  truth,  the 
whole  truth,  and  nothing  but  the  truth;  he 
is  sworn  to  tell  the  truth,  but  not  the  whole 
truth.  He  is  not  perjured,  but  he  is  muzzled. 

Obviously  this  is  an  unhealthy  state,  for  the 
soul  of  a  people  is  in  its  books,  and  I  suspect 
that  it  does  a  people  no  good  if  its  preoccupa- 


tions  find  no  outlet;  it  develops  inhibitions, 
while  its  Puritan  masters  develop  phobias. 
The  cloaking  of  the  truth  makes  neither 
modesty  nor  mock  modesty;  it  make  im- 
purity. There  is  no  market  for  pornography, 
for  pornography  makes  no  converts  who  were 
not  already  converted.  I  believe  that  the 
purity  propaganda  creates  much  of  the  evil 
that  lives ;  I  charge  advertising  reformers  with 
minds  full  of  hate,  bishops  full  of  wind,  and 
bourgeois  full  of  fear,  with  having  exercised 
through  the  pulpit  and  the  platform  a  more 
stimulating  effect  upon  youth,  and  with  hav- 
ing given  it  more  unhealthy  information  about 
white  slavery,  secret  cinemas,  and  disorderly 
houses  than  it  could  ever  have  gained  from 
all  the  books  that  were  ever  printed  in  Am- 
sterdam. I  once  went  to  a  meeting  for  men 
only,  and  came  out  with  two  entirely  new 
brands  of  vice;  a  bishop  held  up  to  me  the 
luridities  of  secret  cinemas,  and  did  everything 
for  me  except  to  give  me  the  address.  But  he 
filled  my  mind  with  cinemas.  One  could 
multiply  these  instances  indefinitely.  I  do 

132 


SINCERITY:    PUBLISHER   AND   POLICEMAN 

not  think  that  we  should  cover  things  up ;  we 
had  enough  of  that  during  the  mid- Victorian 
period,  when  respectability  was  at  its  height, 
and  when  women,  in  bodice  and  bustle,  did 
their  best  to  make  respectability  difficult; 
no,  we  do  not  want  things  covered  up,  but  we 
do  not  want  them  advertised.  I  believe  that 
as  good  coin  drives  out  bad,  the  Puritans 
would  find  a  greater  safety  and  the  world  a 
greater  freedom  in  allowing  good  literature  to 
vie  with  bad ;  the  good  would  inevitably  win ; 
no  immoral  literature  is  good ;  all  bad  literature 
dies.  The  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  cen- 
turies in  England  and  France  produced  the 
vilest  pornography  we  know.  Those  centuries 
also  produced  Moliere  and  Fielding.  Well, 
to-day  you  can  buy  Moliere  and  Fielding 
everywhere  but  the  pornography  of  those 
centuries  is  dead,  and  you  can  find  it  nowhere 
except  in  a  really  good  West  End  club. 

It  may  be  argued  that  the  English  are  not, 
as  a  nation,  interested  in  sex,  that  they  do  not 
discuss  it  and  that  they  do  not  think  about 
it.  If  this  were  true,  then  a  novelist  would 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


be  sincere  if  he  devoted  nine  tenths  of  his  novel 
to  business  and  play  and  no  more  than  a 
tenth  to  sex.  But  it  is  not  true.  The  English, 
particularly  English  women,  speak  a  great  deal 
about  sex  and,  as  they  are  certainly  shy  of  the 
subject,  they  must  devote  to  it  a  great  deal  of 
thought  which  they  never  put  into  words.  If 
anybody  doubts  this,  let  him  play  eavesdropper 
in  a  club,  a  public  house,  or  an  office,  listen  to 
men,  their  views,  their  stories ;  let  him  es- 
pecially discover  how  many  "humorous"  tales 
are  based  on  sex.  And  let  him  discreetly  as- 
certain the  topics  young  women  discuss  when 
no  men  are  present ;  some,  like  Elsie  Lindtner, 
are  frank  enough  to  tell. 

In  their  private  lives  the  English  do  not  talk 
of  sex  as  they  would  like  to,  but  they  do  talk, 
and  more  openly  every  day.  Yet  their  sex 
preoccupations  are  not  reflected  in  the  novels 
which  purport  to  reflect  their  lives;  conver- 
sation is  over-sexed,  the  novel  is  under-sexed, 
therefore  untrue,  therefore  insincere.  For  this 
there  is  no  immediate  remedy.  Neither  the 
Society  of  Authors,  nor  a  combine  of  pub- 


SINCERITY:     PUBLISHER  AND   POLICEMAN 

lishers,  nor  a  "Liberty  Library"  can  shake 
the  combination  of  fears  which  actuates  per- 
secution. The  law  should  certainly  be  tested, 
just  as  it  was  tested  in  France  by  the  prose- 
cution of  Flaubert  in  1857,  but  we  know  per- 
fectly well  that  even  a  victory  for  sincerity 
would  do  no  more  than  carry  us  a  little  nearer 
to  our  goal.  The  law  is  a  trifle  compared 
with  public  feeling,  and  public  feeling  is  a  trifle 
beside  the  emotions  the  public  is  told  it  ought  to 
feel.  We  had  best  reconcile  ourselves  to  the 
inevitable,  admit  that  we  cannot  be  sincere 
because  the  police  dare  not  allow  it,  and  ac- 
quit the  libraries  of  this  one  sin,  that  they 
killed  in  English  literature  a  sincerity  which 
was  not  there. 


VI 
THREE   COMIC   GIANTS 

i 
TARTARIN 

NOT  every  country  and  every  period  give 
birth  to  a  comic  giant.  Tragic  and  sentimental 
heroes  are  common,  and  make  upon  the  history 
of  literature  a  mark  of  sorts ;  we  have  Achilles 
and  Werther,  William  Tell,  d'Artagnan,  Tristan, 
Sir  Galahad,  others,  too,  with  equal  claims  to 
fame :  but  comic  giants  are  few.  The  litera- 
ture of  the  world  is  full  of  comic  pigmies ;  it  is 
fairly  rich  in  half-growns  such  as  Eulenspiegel, 
Mr.  Dooley,  TchitchikofT  and  Mr.  Pickwick, 
but  it  does  not  easily  produce  the  comic  char- 
acter who  stands  alone  and  massive  among  his 
fellows,  like  Balzac  among  novelists.  There 
are  not  half  a  dozen  competitors  for  the  posi- 
tion, for  Pantagruel  and  Gargantua  are  too 

136 


THREE  COMIC   GIANTS 


philosophic,  while  Don  Quixote  does  not  move 
every  reader  to  laughter;   he  is  too  romantic, 
too  noble ;    he  is  hardly  comic.     Baron  von 
Munchausen,  Falstaff,  and  Tartarin  alone  re- 
main face  to  face,  all  of  them  simple,  all  of  them 
adventurous,  but  adventurous  without  literary 
inflation,  as  a  kitten  is  adventurous  when  it 
explores  a  work  basket.     There  is  no  gigantic 
quality   where    there   is    self-consciousness   or 
cynicism;    the  slightest  strain  causes  the  gi- 
gantic to  vanish,  the  creature  becomes  human. 
The  comic  giant  must  be  obvious,  he  must  be, 
to  himself,  rebellious  to  analysis ;  he  must  also 
be  obvious  to  the  beholder,  indeed  transparent. 
That  is  not  a  paradox ;   it  is  a  restatement  of 
the  fact  that  the  comic  giant's  simplicity  must 
be  so  great  that  everybody  but  he  will  realise  it. 
All  this  Tartarin  fulfils.     He  is  the  creature 
of  Alphonse  Daudet,  a  second-rate  writer,  who 
has  earned  for  him  a  title  maybe  to  immortality. 
There  is  no  doubt  that  Daudet  was  a  second- 
rate  writer,  and  that  Mr.  George  Moore  was 
right  when  he  summed  him  up  as  de  la  bouille- 
a-baisse;   his  novels  are  sentimental,  his  remi- 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


niscences  turgid,  his  verses  suitable  for  crackers ; 
but  Daudet  had  an  asset  —  his  extraordinary 
feeling  for  the  South.  It  was  not  knowledge 
or  observation  made  Tartarin ;  it  was  instinct. 
Neither  in  "Tartarin  de  Tarascon ",  nor  in 
"Tartarin  sur  les  Alpes"  was  Daudet  for  a 
moment  inconsistent  or  obscure ;  for  him,  Tar- 
tarin and  his  followers  stood  all  the  time  in 
violent  light.  He  knew  not  only  what  they 
had  to  say  in  given  circumstances,  but  also  what 
they  would  say  in  any  circumstances  that  might 
arise. 

It  is  not  wonderful  then,  that  Tartarin  ap- 
pears as  a  large  character.  You  will  figure  him 
throughout  as  a  French  bourgeois,  aged  about 
forty  in  the  first  novel,  fifty  in  the  second,  and 
sixty  in  the  third.  Daudet's  dates  being  un- 
reliable, you  must  assume  his  adventures  as 
happening  between  1861  and  1881,  and  bridge 
the  gaps  that  exist  between  them  with  a  vision 
of  Tartarin's  stormily  peaceful  life  in  the  sleepy 
town  of  Tarascon.  For  Tartarin  was  too  ad- 
venturous to  live  without  dangers  and  storms. 
When  he  was  not  shooting  lions  in  Algeria,  or 

138 


THREE  COMIC  GIANTS 


climbing  the  Alps,  or  colonising  in  Polynesia, 
Tartarin  was  still  a  hero :  he  lived  in  his  little 
white  house  with  the  green  shutters,  surrounded 
with  knives,  revolvers,  rifles,  double-handed 
swords,  crishes,  and  yataghans;  he  read,  not 
the  local  paper,  but  Fenimore  Cooper  and  Cap- 
tain Cook;  he  learned  how  to  fight  and  how 
to  hunt,  how  to  follow  a  trail,  or  he  hypnotised 
himself  with  the  recitals  of  Alpine  climbs,  of 
battles  in  China  with  the  bellicose  Tartar. 
Save  under  compulsion,  he  never  did  anything, 
partly  because  there  was  nothing  to  do  at  Taras- 
con,  partly  because  his  soul  was  turned  rather 
towards  bourgeois  comfort  than  towards  glory 
and  blood.  This,  however,  the  fiery  Southerner 
could  not  accept :  if  he  could  not  do  he  could 
pretend,  and  thus  did  Daudet  establish  the 
enormous  absurdity  of  his  character. 

There  was  nothing  to  shoot  at  Tarascon,  so 
Tartarin  and  his  followers  went  solemnly  into 
the  fields  and  fired  at  their  caps ;  there  was 
nothing  to  climb,  except  the  neighbouring  Alp- 
illes  —  whose  height  was  three  hundred  feet, 
but  Tartarin  bought  an  alpenstock  and  printed 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


upon  his  visiting  cards  initials  which  meant 
"President  of  the  Alpine  Club";  there  was 
no  danger  in  the  town,  but  Tartarin  never  went 
out  at  night  without  a  dagger  and  several  guns. 
He  was  a  bourgeois,  but  he  was  a  romantic : 
he  had  to  find  in  fiction  the  excitement  that  life 
refused  him,  to  create  it  where  it  did  not  exist. 
In  the  rough,  Tartarin  was  the  jovial  French- 
man of  the  South,  short,  fat,  excitable,  unable 
to  see  things  as  they  are,  unable  to  restrain  his 
voice,  his  gestures,  his  imagination ;  he  was 
greedy  and  self-deceived,  he  saw  trifles  as  enor- 
mous, he  placed  the  world  under  a  magnifying 
glass. 

Because  of  this  enormous  vision  of  life  Tar- 
tarin was  driven  into  adventure.  Because  he 
magnified  his  words  he  was  compelled  by  popu- 
lar opinion  to  sail  to  Algiers  to  shoot  lions, 
though  he  was  at  heart  afraid  of  dogs ;  to  scale 
the  Alps,  though  he  shuddered  when  he  thought 
of  catching  cold.  He  had  to  justify  himself  in 
the  eyes  of  his  fellow  citizens,  or  forego  forever 
the  halo  of  heroism.  He  did  not  have  to  aban- 
don it,  for  Daudet  loved  his  Tartarin;  in  Al- 

140 


THREE   COMIC   GIANTS 


geria  he  was  mocked,  swindled,  beaten,  but 
somehow  he  secured  his  lion's  skin;  and,  in 
the  Alps,  he  actually  scaled  both  the  Jungfrau 
and  Mont  Blanc  —  the  first  without  knowing 
that  it  was  dangerous,  the  second  against  his 
will.  Tartarin  won  because  he  was  vital,  his 
vitality  served  him  as  a  shield.  All  his  qualities 
were  of  those  that  make  a  man  absurd  but  in- 
vincible; his  exaggeration,  his  histrionics,  his 
mock  heroics,  his  credulity,  his  mild  sensuality, 
his  sentimentality  and  his  bumptious  cowardice 
—  all  this  blended  into  an  enormous  bubbling 
charm  which  neither  man  nor  circumstance 
could  in  the  end  withstand. 

Daudet  brings  out  his  traits  on  every  page. 
Everywhere  he  makes  Tartarin  strut  and  swell 
as  a  turkey  cock.  Exaggeration,  in  other  words 
lying,  lay  in  every  word  and  deed  of  Tartarin. 
He  could  not  say :  "We  were  a  couple  of  thou- 
sand at  the  amphitheatre  yesterday,"  but  natu- 
rally said:  "We  were  fifty  thousand."  And 
he  was  not  exactly  lying ;  Daudet,  who  loved 
him  well,  pleaded  that  this  was  not  lying  but 
mirage,  mirage  induced  by  the  hot  sun.  He 

141 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


was  not  quite  wrong :  when  Tartarin  said  that 
he  had  killed  forty  lions  he  believed  it;  and 
his  fellow  climber  believed  the  absurd  story  he 
had  concocted :  that  Switzerland  was  a  fraud, 
that  there  were  eiderdowns  at  the  bottom  of 
every  crevasse,  and  that  he  had  himself  climbed 
the  Andes  on  his  hands  and  knees.  Likewise, 
Tartarin  and  the  people  of  Tarascon  were  de- 
ceived by  their  own  histrionics.  The  baobab 
(arbos  gigantea)  which  Tartarin  trained  in  a 
flowerpot  stood,  in  their  imagination,  a  hundred 
feet  high. 

Histrionics  and  mock  heroics  pervade  the 
three  books.  It  is  not  the  fact  that  matters, 
it  is  the  fact  seen  through  the  coloured  Southern 
mind,  and  that  mind  turns  at  once  away  from 
the  fact  towards  the  trifles  that  attend  it.  Thus 
costume  is  everywhere  a  primary  concern. 
Tartarin  cannot  land  at  Algiers  to  shoot  lions 
unless  he  be  dressed  for  the  part  in  Arab  clothes, 
and  he  must  carry  three  rifles,  drag  behind  him 
a  portable  camp,  a  pharmacy,  a  patent  tent, 
patent  compressed  foods.  Nothing  is  too  ab- 
surd for  him :  he  has  a  "Winchester  rifle  with 

142 


THREE  COMIC  GIANTS 


thirty- two  cartridges  in  the  magazine";  he 
does  not  shrink  from  "a  rifle  with  a  semicircular 
barrel  for  shooting  round  the  corner"  To  climb 
the  Righi  (instead  of  using  the  funicular)  he 
must  wear  a  jersey,  ice  shoes,  snow  goggles. 
Everywhere  he  plays  a  part  and  plays  it  in 
costume.  Nor  is  Tartarin  alone  in  this;  the 
Tarasconnais  emulate  their  chief :  Major  Bra- 
vida  dons  black  when  he  calls  to  compel  Tar- 
tarin "to  redeem  his  honour"  and  sail  for 
Algiers;  when  Port  Tarascon,  the  frantic 
colony,  is  formed,  costumes  are  designed  for 
grandees,  for  the  militia,  for  the  bureaucrats. 
Appearances  alone  matter :  Tarascon  is  not 
content  with  the  French  flag,  but  spread-eagles 
across  it  a  fantastic  local  animal,  La  Tarasque, 
of  mythical  origin. 

Life  in  Tarascon  is  too  easy :  Tartarin  helps 
it  on  with  a  warwhoop.  He  creates  adventure. 
Thus  in  1870  he  organises  against  the  Germans 
the  defence  of  the  town ;  mines  are  laid  under 
the  market  place,  the  Cafe  de  la  Comedie  is 
turned  into  a  redoubt,  volunteers  drill  in  the 
street.  Of  course  there  is  no  fighting,  the  Ger- 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


mans  do  not  come,  nor  do  the  prudent  Taras- 
connais  attempt  to  seek  them  out,  but  in  its 
imagination  the  town  has  been  heroic.  It  is 
heroic  again  when  it  defends  against  the  gov- 
ernment the  monks  of  Pamperigouste :  the 
convent  becomes  a  fortress,  but  there  is  no 
fighting ;  when  the  supplies  give  out  the  heroic 
defenders  march  out  with  their  weapons  and 
their  banners,  in  their  crusaders'  uniforms. 
The  town  believes.  It  believes  anything  and 
anybody.  Because  a  rogue  calls  himself  a 
prince,  Tartarin  entrusts  him  with  his  money 
and  is  deserted  in  the  Sahara ;  because  another 
calls  himself  a  duke,  thousands  of  Tarasconnais 
follow  Tartarin  to  a  non-existent  colony  bought 
by  them  from  the  pseudo-duke.  Whether  the 
matter  be  general  or  personal,  Tartarin  believes. 
He  falls  in  love  with  a  Moorish  girl,  and  inno- 
cently allows  himself  to  be  persuaded  that  a 
substitute  is  the  beauty  whom  he  glimpsed 
through  the  yashmak. 

Tartarin  believes  because  he  is  together  ro- 
mantic, sentimental,  and  mildly  sensual :  that 
which  he  likes  he  wants  to  think  true.  He 

144 


THREE  COMIC   GIANTS 


wants  to  believe  that  sweet  Baia  is  his  true  love ; 
when  again  he  succumbs  to  Sonia,  the  Russian 
exile,  he  wants  to  believe  that  he  too  is  an  ex- 
tremist, a  potential  martyr  in  the  cause  of  Nihil- 
ism ;  and  again  he  wants  to  believe  that  Likiriki, 
the  negro  girl,  is  the  little  creature  of  charm  for 
whom  his  heart  has  been  calling.  His  senti- 
mentality is  always  ready  —  for  women,  for 
ideas,  for  beasts.  He  can  be  moved  when  he 
hears  for  the  hundredth  time  the  ridiculous 
ballads  that  are  popular  in  the  local  drawing- 
rooms,  weep  when  Bezuquet,  the  chemist,  sings 
"Oh  thou,  beloved  white  star  of  my  soul!" 
For  him  the  lion  is  "a  noble  beast",  who  must 
be  shot,  not  caged;  the  horse  "the  most  glo- 
rious conquest  of  man."  He  is  always  above 
the  world,  never  of  it  unless  his  own  safety  be 
endangered,  when  he  scuttles  to  shelter;  as 
Daudet  says,  half  Tartarin  is  Quixote,  half  is 
Sancho  —  but  Sancho  wins.  It  is  because 
Tartarin  is  a  comic  coward  that  he  will  not  allow 
the  heroic  crusaders  of  Pamperigouste  to  fire 
on  the  government  troops;  the  "abbot"  of 
Port  Tarascon  to  train  the  carronade  on  the 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


English  frigate;  alone,  he  is  a  greater  coward 
than  in  public;  he  shivers  under  his  weapons 
when  he  walks  to  the  club  in  the  evening;  he 
severs  the  rope  on  Mont  Blanc,  sending  his 
companion  to  probable  death.  But  the  bur- 
lesque does  not  end  tragically :  nobody  actually 
dies;  all  return  to  Tarascon  in  time  to  hear 
their  funeral  orations. 

It  might  be  thought  that  Tartarin  is  repul- 
sive :  he  is  not ;  he  is  too  young,  too  innocent. 
His  great,  foolish  heart  is  too  open  to  the  woes 
of  any  damsel ;  his  simplicity,  his  credulity,  his 
muddled  faith,  the  optimism  which  no  misfor- 
tune can  shatter  —  all  these  traits  endear  him 
to  us,  make  him  real.  For  Tartarin  is  real :  he 
is  the  Frenchman  of  the  South ;  in  the  words  of 
a  character,  "The  Tarasconnais  type  is  the 
Frenchman  magnified,  exaggerated,  as  seen  in 
a  convex  mirror."  Tartarin  and  his  fellows 
typify  the  South,  though  some  typify  one  side 
of  the  Southern  Frenchman  rather  than  an- 
other ;  thus  Bravida  is  military  pride,  Excour- 
banies  is  the  liar,  and  mild  Pascalon  is  the  imi- 
tator of  imitators :  when  Tarascon,  arrested 

146 


THREE  COMIC   GIANTS 


by  the  British  captain  and  brought  home  on 
board  the  frigate,  takes  up  the  attitude  of 
Napoleon  on  the  Bellerophon,  Pascalon  begins 
a  memorial  and  tries  to  impersonate  Las  Cases. 
As  for  Tartarin,  bellwether  of  the  flock,  he  has 
all  the  characteristics,  he  even  sings  all  the 
songs.  He  is  the  South. 

The  three  Tartarin  books  constitute  together 
the  most  violent  satire  that  has  ever  been 
written  against  the  South.  Gascony,  Pro- 
vence, and  Languedoc  are  often  made  the  butts 
of  Northern  French  writers,  while  Lombards 
introduce  in  books  ridiculous  Neapolitans,  and 
Catalonians  paint  burlesque  Andalusians,  but 
no  writer  has  equalled  Alphonse  Daudet  in 
consistent  ferocity.  So  evident  is  this,  that 
Tarascon  to  this  day  resents  the  publications, 
and  some  years  ago  a  commercial  traveller  who 
humorously  described  himself  on  the  hotel 
register  as  "Alphonse  Daudet"  was  mobbed 
in  the  street,  and  rescued  by  the  police  from 
the  rabble  who  threatened  to  throw  him  into 
the  Rhone.  Tarascon,  a  little  junction  on  the 
way  to  Marseilles,  has  been  made  absurd  for- 
147 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


ever.  Yet,  though  Daudet  exaggerated,  he 
built  on  the  truth :  there  is  a  close  connection 
between  his  preposterous  figures,  grown  men 
with  the  tendencies  of  children  enormously  dis- 
torted, and  the  Frenchman  of  the  South.  In- 
deed, the  Southern  Frenchman  is  the  French- 
man as  we  picture  him  in  England ;  there  is 
between  him  and  his  compatriot  from  Picardy 
or  Flanders  a  difference  as  great  as  exists  be- 
tween the  Scotsman  and  the  man  of  Kent.  The 
Northern  Frenchman  is  sober,  silent,  hard, 
reasonable,  and  logical;  his  imagination  is 
negligible,  his  artistic  taste  as  corrupt  as  that 
of  an  average  inhabitant  of  the  Midlands.  But 
the  Southern  Frenchman  is  a  different  creature ; 
his  excitable  temperament,  his  irresponsibility 
and  impetuousness  run  through  the  majority 
of  French  artists  and  politicians.  As  the  French 
saying  goes,  "the  South  moves"  ;  thus  it  is  not 
wonderful  that  Le  Havre  and  Lille  should  not 
rival  Marseilles  and  Bordeaux. 

Tartarin  lives  to  a  greater  or  lesser  degree 
within  every  Frenchman  of  the  plains,  born 
south  of  the  line  which  unites  Lyons  and  Bor- 
148 


THREE  COMIC  GIANTS 


deaux.  It  is  Tartarin  who  stands  for  hours  at 
street  corners  in  Aries  or  Montpellier,  chattering 
with  Tartarin  and,  like  Tartarin,  endlessly  brags 
of  the  small  birds  he  has  killed,  of  the  hearts 
he  has  won,  and  of  his  extraordinary  luck  at 
cards.  It  is  Tartarin  again  who  still  wears 
nightcaps  and  flannel  belts,  and  drinks  every 
morning  great  bowls  of  chocolate.  And  it  is 
Tartarin  who,  light-heartedly,  joins  the  colonial 
infantry  regiment  and  goes  singing  into  battle 
because  he  likes  the  adventure  and  would  rather 
die  in  the  field  than  be  bored  in  barracks.  Dau- 
det  has  maligned  the  South  so  far  as  courage 
is  concerned :  there  is  nothing  to  show  that  the 
Southerners,  Tarasconnais  and  others,  are  any 
more  cowardly  than  the  men  of  the  North. 
Courage  goes  in  zones,  and  because  the  North 
has  generally  proved  harder,  the  South  must 
not  be  indicted  en  bloc.  Presumably  Daudet 
felt  compelled  to  make  Tartarin  a  poltroon  so 
as  to  throw  into  relief  his  braggadocio;  that 
is  a  flaw  in  his  work,  but  if  it  be  accepted  as  the 
license  of  a  litterateur,  it  does  not  mar  the  pic- 
ture of  Tartarin. 

149 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


It  should  not,  therefore,  be  lost  sight  of  by 
the  reader  of  "Tartarin  de  Tarascon"  and  of 
"Tartarin  Sur  Les  Alpes"  that  this  is  a  cari- 
cature. Every  line  is  true,  but  modified  a  little 
by  the  "mirage"  that  Alphonse  Daudet  so 
deftly  satirises;  it  is  only  so  much  distorted 
as  irony  demands.  "Tartarin  de  Tarascon"  is 
by  far  the  best  of  the  three  books ;  it  is  the  most 
compact,  and  within  its  hundred-odd  pages  the 
picture  of  Tartarin  is  completely  painted ;  the 
sequel  is  merely  the  response  of  the  author  to 
the  demand  of  a  public  who  so  loved  Tartarin 
as  to  buy  five  hundred  thousand  copies  of  his 
adventures.  As  for  "Port  Tarascon",  the  be- 
ginning of  Tartarin's  end,  it  should  not  have 
been  written,  for  it  closes  on  a  new  Tartarin 
who  no  longer  believes  in  his  own  triumphs  — 
a  sober,  disillusioned  Tartarin,  shorn  of  his 
glory,  flouted  by  his  compatriots,  and  ready 
to  die  in  a  foreign  town.  Alphonse  Daudet 
had  probably  tired  of  his  hero,  for  he  understood 
him  no  longer.  The  real  Tartarin  could  not 
be  depressed  by  misadventure,  chastened  by 
loss  of  prestige :  to  cast  him  to  earth  could  only 

150 


THREE  COMIC   GIANTS 


bring  about  once  more  the  prodigy  of  Antaeus. 
He  would  have  risen  again,  more  optimistic  and 
bombastic  than  ever,  certain  that  no  enemy 
had  thrown  him  and  that  he  had  but  slipped. 
And  if  Tartarin  had  to  die,  which  is  not  certain, 
for  Tartarin's  essence  is  immortal,  he  could  not 
die  disgraced,  but  must  die  sumptuously  —  like 
Cleopatra  among  her  jewels,  or  a  Tartar  chief 
standing  on  his  piled  arms  on  the  crest  of  a 
funeral  pyre. 


FALSTAFF 

Like  Hamlet,  Tartuffe,  Don  Quixote,  Fal- 
staff  has  had  his  worshippers  and  his  exegetists. 
The  character  Doctor  Johnson  dwelled  on 
still  serves  to-day  to  exercise  the  critical  capac- 
ity of  the  freshman ;  he  is  one  of  the  stars  in 
a  crowded  cast,  a  human,  fallible,  lovable 
creature,  and  it  is  not  wonderful  that  so  many 
have  asked  themselves  whether  there  lurked 
fineness  and  piety  within  his  gross  frame. 
But,  though  "his  pyramid  rise  high  unto 
heaven",  it  is  not  everybody  has  fully  realised 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


his  psychological  enormity,  his  nationality; 
the  tendency  has  been  to  look  upon  him  rather 
as  a  man  than  as  a  type.  I  do  not  contend 
that  it  is  desirable  to  magnify  type  at  the 
expense  of  personality ;  far  from  it,  for  the 
personal  quality  is  ever  more  appealing  than 
the  typical,  but  one  should  not  ignore  the 
generalities  which  hide  in  the  individual, 
especially  when  they  are  evident.  It  is  re- 
markable that  Doctor  Johnson  should  have  so 
completely  avoided  this  side  of  Falstaffs  char- 
acter, so  remarkable  that  I  quote  in  full  his 
appreciation  of  the  fat  Knight 1 : 

"But  Falstaff,  unimitated,  unimitable  Fal- 
staff !  how  shall  I  describe  thee  ?  thou  com- 
pound of  sense  and  vice;  of  sense  which  may 
be  admired,  but  not  esteemed ;  of  vice  which 
may  be  despised,  but  hardly  detested.  Fal- 
staff is  a  character  loaded  with  faults,  and  with 
those  faults  which  naturally  produce  con- 
tempt. He  is  a  thief  and  a  glutton,  a  coward 
and  a  boaster ;  always  ready  to  cheat  the  weak, 
and  prey  upon  the  poor ;  to  terrify  the  timor- 
ous, and  insult  the  defenceless.  At  once 

1  Following  on  the  second  part  of  King  Henry  IV.,  Doc- 
tor Johnson's  edition,  1765. 

152 


THREE  COMIC  GIANTS 


obsequious  and  malignant,  he  satirises  in  their 
absence  those  whom  he  lives  by  flattering. 
He  is  familiar  with  the  prince  only  as  an  agent 
of  vice ;  but  of  this  familiarity  he  is  so  proud, 
as  not  only  to  be  supercilious  and  haughty 
with  common  men,  but  to  think  his  interest 
of  importance  to  the  Duke  of  Lancaster.  Yet 
the  man  thus  corrupt,  thus  despicable,  makes 
himself  necessary  to  the  prince  that  despises 
him,  by  the  most  pleasing  of  all  qualities,  per- 
petual gaiety ;  by  an  unfailing  power  of  excit- 
ing laughter,  which  is  the  more  freely  indulged, 
as  his  wit  is  not  of  the  splendid  or  ambitious 
kind,  but  consists  in  easy  scapes  and  sallies  of 
levity,  which  make  sport,  but  raise  no  envy. 
It  must  be  observed,  that  he  is  stained  with 
no  enormous  or  sanguinary  crimes,  so  that  his 
licentiousness  is  not  so  offensive  but  that 
it  may  be  borne  for  his  mirth." 

A  judgment  such  as  this  one  is  character- 
istic of  Johnson;  it  is  elaborate,  somewhat 
prejudiced,  and  very  narrow.  Johnson  evi- 
dently saw  Falstaff  as  a  mere  man,  perhaps  as 
one  whose  ghost  he  would  willingly  have 
taught  to  smoke  a  churchwarden  at  the  "Che- 
shire Cheese."  He  saw  in  him  neither  heroic 
nor  national  qualities  and  would  have  scoffed 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


at  the  possibility  of  their  existence,  basing  him- 
self on  his  own  remark  to  Boswell :  "I  despise 
those  who  do  not  see  that  I  am  right.  .  .  ." 

But  smaller  men  than  Johnson  have  judged 
Falstaff  in  a  small  way.  They  have  concen- 
trated on  his  comic  traits,  and  considered 
very  little  whether  he  might  be  dubbed  either 
giant  or  Englishman :  if  Falstaff  is  a  diamond 
they  have  cut  but  one  or  two  facets.  Now 
the  comic  side  of  Falstaff  must  not  be  ignored ; 
if  he  were  incapable  of  creating  laughter,  if  he 
could  draw  from  us  no  more  than  a  smile,  as 
do  the  heroes  of  Anatole  France,  of  Sterne,  or 
Swift,  his  gigantic  capacity  would  be  affected. 
It  is  essential  that  he  should  be  absurd ; 
it  is  essential  that  he  should  be  fat,  for  it 
is  an  established  fact  that  humanity  laughs 
gladly  at  bulk,  at  men  such  as  Sancho  Panza 
and  Mr.  Pickwick.  It  is  likely  that  Shake- 
speare was  aware  of  our  instinct  when  he  caused 
Hal  to  call  Falstaff  "this  bed-presser,  this 
horseback-breaker,  this  huge  hill  of  flesh." 
In  the  mathematics  of  the  stage  fat  =  comedy, 
lean  ==  tragedy ;  I  do  not  believe  that  Hamlet 


THREE  COMIC  GIANTS 


was  flesh-burdened,   even   though   "scant  of 
breath." 

Fat  was,  however,  but  Falstaff's  prelude  to 
comedy.  He  needed  to  be  what  he  otherwise 
was,  coarse,  salaciously-minded,  superstitious, 
blustering,  cowardly  and  lying;  he  needed  to 
be  a  joker,  ofttimes  a  wit,  and  withal  a  sleepy 
drunkard,  a  butt  for  pranks.  His  coarseness 
is  comic,  but  not  revolting,  for  it  centres  rather 
on  the  human  body  than  on  the  human  emotion ; 
he  does  not  habitually  scoff  at  justice,  gen- 
erosity, or  faithfulness,  even  though  he  be 
neither  just,  nor  generous,  nor  faithful:  his 
brutality  is  a  brutality  of  word  rather  than 
thought,  one  akin  to  that  of  our  lower  classes. 
Had  Falstaff  not  had  an  air  of  the  world  and 
a  custom  of  courts  he  would  have  typified  the 
lowest  classes  of  our  day  and  perhaps  been 
below  those  of  his  own  time.  His  is  the 
coarseness  of  the  drunkard,  a  jovial  and  not 
a  maudlin  drunkard;  when  sober  he  reacts 
against  his  own  brutality,  vows  to  "  ... 
purge  and  leave  sack,  and  live  cleanly,  as  a 
nobleman  should  do." 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


Falstaff  led  his  life  by  a  double  thread. 
Filled  with  the  joy  of  living,  as  he  understood 
it,  limited  by  his  desires  for  sack  and  such  as 
Doll  Tearsheet,  he  was  bound  too  by  his 
stupidity.  He  was  stupid,  though  crafty,  as 
is  a  cat,  an  instinctive  animal;  none  but  a 
stupid  man  could  have  taken  seriously  the 
mockery  of  the  fairies  in  Windsor  Park ;  him- 
self it  is  acknowledges  that  he  is  "made  an  ass." 
We  laugh,  and  again  we  laugh  when,  in  silly 
terror  and  credulity,  he  allows  the  Merry  Wives 
to  pack  him  in  the  foul  linen  basket;  where 
Falstaff  is,  there  is  also  rubicund  pleasantry. 

In  the  same  spirit  we  make  merry  over  his 
cowardice;  the  cowardice  itself  is  not  comic, 
indeed  it  would  be  painful  to  see  him  to  stand 
and  deliver  to  Gadshill,  if  the  surrender  were 
not  prefaced  by  the  deep  grumbles  of  a  man 
who  suspects  that  Hal  and  Poins  have  captured 
his  affections  with  drugs,  who  acknowledges 
that  "eight  yards  of  uneven  ground  is  three- 
score and  ten  miles  afoot"  with  him.  The  bur- 
lesque conceals  the  despicable,  and  we  fail  to 
sneer  because  we  laugh;  we  forgive  his  ac- 


THREE  COMIC  GIANTS 


ceptance  of  insult  at  the  hands  of  the  Chief 
Justice's  servant :  it  is  not  well  that  a  knight 
should  allow  a  servant  to  tell  him  that  he  lies 
in  his  throat,  but  if  leave  to  do  so  can  be  given 
in  jest  the  insult  loses  its  sting.  Falstaff  is 
more  than  a  coward,  he  is  the  coward-type, 
for  he  is  (like  Pistol)  the  blustering  coward. 
The  mean,  cringing  coward  is  unskilled  at  his 
trade :  the  true  coward  is  the  fat  knight  who, 
no  sooner  convicted  of  embellishing  his  fight 
with  highwaymen,  of  having  forgone  his  booty 
rather  than  defend  it,  can  roar  that  he  fears 
and  will  obey  no  man,  and  solemnly  says : 
"'Zounds!  an'  I  were  at  the  strappado,  or  all 
the  racks  in  the  world,  I  would  not  tell  you 
upon  compulsion."  The  attitude  is  so  simple, 
so  impudent,  that  we  laugh,  forgive.  And  we 
forgive  because  such  an  attitude  could  not 
be  struck  with  confidence  save  by  a  giant. 

A  giant  he  is,  this  comic  and  transparent  man. 
There  is  nothing  unobtrusive  in  Falstaff's 
being ;  his  feelings  and  his  motives  are  so 
large  as  to  be  unmistakable.  His  jolly  bru- 
tality and  mummery  of  pride  are  in  themselves 


almost  enough  to  ensure  him  the  crown  of  Go- 
liath, but  add  to  these  the  poetry  wrapped  in 
his  lewdness,  the  idealistic  gallantry  which  fol- 
lows hard  upon  his  crudity,  add  that  he  is  law- 
less because  he  is  adventurous,  add  simplicity, 
bewilderment,  and  cast  over  this  temperament 
a  web  of  wistful  philosophy :  then  Falstaff 
stands  forth  enormous  and  alone. 

Falstaff  is  full  of  gross,  but  artistic  glee; 
for  him  life  is  epic  and  splendid,  and  his  poetic 
temperament  enables  him  to  discover  the 
beauty  that  is  everywhere.  It  may  be  that 
Henry  IV  rightly  says:  "riot  and  dishonour 
stain  the  brow  of  my  young  Harry.",  but  it 
may  be  also  that  the  young  prince  is  not  un- 
fortunate in  a  companion  who  can  rind  grace 
in  highwaymen :  "  ...  let  us  not  that  are 
squires  of  the  night's  body  be  called  thieves  of 
the  day's  beauty :  let  us  be  Diana's  foresters, 
gentlemen  of  the  shade,  minions  of  the  moon ; 
and  let  men  say,  we  be  men  of  good  govern- 
ment, being  governed  as  the  sea  is,  by  our 
noble  and  chaste  mistress  the  moon,  under 
whose  countenance  we  steal."  Falstaff  is  big 

158 


THREE  COMIC  GIANTS 


with  the  love  of  life  and  ever  giving  birth  to 
it ;  he  is  the  spirit  of  the  earth,  a  djinn  released 
whom  none  may  bottle.  Because  of  this  he 
is  lawless ;  he  cannot  respect  the  law,  for  he 
can  respect  no  limits ;  he  bursts  out  from  the 
small  restrictions  of  man  as  does  his  mighty 
paunch  from  his  leather  belt.  It  is  hopeless 
to  try  to  abash  him ;  force  even,  as  embodied 
in  the  Chief  Justice,  does  not  awe  him  over- 
much, so  well  does  he  know  that  threats  will 
not  avail  to  impair  his  pleasure.  Falstaff  in 
gaol  would  make  merry  with  the  gaolers,  divert 
them  with  quips,  throw  dice  and  drink  end- 
lessly the  sack  they  would  offer  him  for  love. 
He  cannot  be  daunted,  feeling  too  deeply 
that  he  holds  the  ball  of  the  world  between 
his  short  arms;  once  only  does  FalstafFs  big, 
gentle  heart  contract,  when  young  Hal  takes 
ill  his  kindly  cry :  "  God  save  thee,  my  sweet 
boy!"  He  is  assured  that  he  will  be  sent  for 
in  private,  and  it  is  in  genuine  pain  rather  than 
fear  he  cries  out:  "My  lord,  my  lord!"  when 
committed  to  the  Fleet. 

In  this  simple  faith  lies  much  of  Falstaff's 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


gigantic  quality.  To  believe  everything,  to  be 
gullible,  in  brief  to  be  as  nearly  as  may  be  an 
instinctive  animal,  that  is  to  be  great.  I 
would  not  have  Falstaff  sceptical;  he  must 
be  credulous,  faithfully  become  the  ambassador 
of  Ford  to  Ford's  wife,  and  be  deceived,  and 
again  deceived ;  he  must  believe  himself  loved 
of  all  women,  of  Mistress  Ford,  or  Mistress 
Page,  or  Doll  Tearsheet;  he  must  readily  be 
fooled,  pinched,  pricked,  singed,  ridiculously 
arrayed  in  the  clothes  of  Mother  Prat.  One 
moment  of  doubt,  a  single  enquiry,  and  the 
colossus  would  fall  from  his  pedestal,  become 
as  mortal  and  suspicious  men.  But  there  is  no 
downfall;  he  believes  and,  breasting  through 
the  sea  of  ridicule,  he  holds  Mistress  Ford  in  his 
arms  for  one  happy  moment,  the  great  moment 
which  even  a  rain  of  potatoes  from  the  sky  could 
not  spoil.  It  could  not,  for  there  echoes  in  Fal- 
staff's  mind  the  sweet  tune  of  "  Green  Sleeves" : 

"  Greensleeves  was  all  my  joy, 
Greensleeves  was  my  delight, 
Greensleeves  was  my  heart  of  gold, 
And  who  but  Lady  Greensleeves?" 
160 


THREE   COMIC   GIANTS 


It  is  natural  that  such  a  temperament  should, 
in  the  ordinary  sense,  breed  lies.  Falstaff  does 
and  does  not  lie ;  like  Tartarin  he  probably 
suffers  from  mirage  and,  when  attacked  by  high- 
waymen, truly  sees  them  as  a  hundred  when, 
in  fact,  they  are  but  two.  But  he  is  not  cer- 
tain, he  is  too  careless  of  detail,  he  readily  re- 
sponds when  it  is  suggested  he  lies  and  makes 
the  hundred  into  a  mere  sixteen.  Falstaff  the 
artist  is  either  unconscious  of  exaggeration, 
therefore  truthful,  or  takes  a  childish  pleasure 
in  exaggerating ;  he  is  a  giant,  therefore  may 
exaggerate,  for  all  things  are  small  relatively 
to  him.  If  the  ocean  could  speak  none  would 
reproach  it  if  it  said  that  fifty  inches  of  rain 
had  fallen  into  its  bosom  within  a  single  hour, 
for  what  would  it  matter?  one  inch  or  fifty, 
what  difference  would  that  make  to  the  ocean  ? 
Falstaff  is  as  the  ocean;  he  can  stand  upon  a 
higher  pedestal  of  lies  than  can  the  mortal, 
for  it  does  not  make  him  singular.  Indeed  it  is 
this  high  pedestal  of  grossness,  lying,  and  falsity, 
makes  him  great ;  no  small  man  would  dare  to 
erect  it;  Falstaff  dares,  for  he  is  unashamed. 

16! 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


He  is  unashamed,  and  yet  not  quite  uncon- 
scious. I  will  not  harp  on  the  glimmerings 
that  pierce  through  the  darkness  of  his  vanity : 
if  anything  they  are  injurious,  for  they  drag 
him  down  to  earth ;  Shakespeare  evidently 
realised  that  these  glimmerings  made  Falstaff 
more  human,  introduced  them  with  intention, 
for  he  could  not  know  that  he  was  creating  a 
giant,  a  Laughter  God,  who  should  be  devoid 
of  mortal  attributes.  But  these  flecks  are 
inevitable,  and  perhaps  normal  in  the  human 
conception  of  the  extra-human :  the  Greek 
Gods  and  Demigods,  too,  had  their  passions, 
their  envies,  and  their  tantrums.  Falstaff  bears 
these  small  mortalities  and  bears  them  easily 
with  the  help  of  his  simple,  sincere  philosophy. 

It  is  pitiful  to  think  of  Falstaff's  death,  in 
the  light  of  his  philosophy.  According  to  Mr. 
Rowe,1  "though  it  be  extremely  natural,  'it' 
is  yet  as  diverting  as  any  part  of  his  life." 
I  do  not  think  so,  for  hear  Mistress  Quickly, 
the  wife  of  Pistol:  "Nay,  sure,  he's  not  in 
hell :  he's  in  Arthur's  bosom,  if  ever  man  went 

,l  Account  of  the  Life  and  Writings  of  Shakespeare. 
162 


THREE  COMIC  GIANTS 


to  Arthur's  bosom.  A'  made  a  finer  end,  and 
went  away,  an  it  had  been  any  christom  child ; 
a'  parted  just  between  twelve  and  one,  even  at 
the  turning  o'  the  tide:  for  after  I  saw  him 
fumble  with  the  sheets,  and  play  with  flowers, 
and  smile  upon  his  fingers'  ends,  I  knew  there 
was  but  one  way ;  for  his  nose  was  as  sharp  as 
a  pen,  and  a'  babbled  of  green  fields.  'How 
now,  Sir  John!'  quoth  I:  'what,  man!  be  of 
good  cheer ! '  So  a'  cried  out,  '  God,  God, 
God ! '  three  or  four  times :  now  I,  to  comfort 
him,  bid  him  a'  should  not  think  of  God;  I 
hoped  there  was  no  need  to  trouble  himself 
with  any  such  thoughts  yet.  So  a'  bade  me 
lay  more  clothes  on  his  feet ;  I  put  my  hand  into 
the  bed,  and  felt  them,  and  they  were  as  cold 
as  any  stone ;  then  I  felt  to  his  knees,  and  so 
upward,  and  upward,  and  all  was  as  cold  as 
any  stone." 

It  is  an  incredible  tale.  Falstaff  to  die,  to 
be  cold,  to  call  mournfully  upon  his  God  .  .  . 
it  is  pitiful,  and  as  he  died  he  played  with 
flowers,  those  things  nearest  to  his  beloved 
earth.  For  he  loved  the  earth;  he  had  the 
163 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


traits  of  the  peasant,  his  lusts,  his  simplicity, 
his  coarseness,  and  his  unquestioning  faith. 
His  guide  was  a  rough  and  jovial  Epicureanism, 
which  rated  equally  with  pleasure  the  avoid- 
ance of  pain ;  FalstafF  loved  pleasure  but  was 
too  simple  to  realise  that  pleasure  must  be 
paid  for ;  the  giant  wanted  or  the  giant  did  not 
want,  and  there  was  an  end  of  the  matter.  He 
viewed  life  so  plainly  that  he  was  ready  to 
juggle  with  words  and  facts,  so  as  to  square  it 
with  his  desires;  thus,  when  honour  offended 
him,  he  came  to  believe  there  was  no  honour,  to 
refuse  God  the  death  he  owed  him  because  of 
honour :  "Yea,  but  how  if  honour  prick  me  off 
when  I  come  on?  how  then?  Can  honour  set 
a  leg  ?  No.  Or  an  arm  ?  No.  Or  take  away 
the  grief  of  a  wound?  No.  Honour  hath  no 
skill  in  surgery  then?  No.  Who  hath  it? 
He  that  died  o'  Wednesday.  Doth  he  feel  it? 
No.  Doth  he  hear  it?  No.  It  is  insensible 
then?  Yea,  to  the  dead.  But  will  it  not  live 
with  the  living  ?  No.  Why  ?  Detraction  will 
not  suffer  it.  Therefore  I'll  none  of  it ;  honour 
is  a  mere  scutcheon ;  and  so  ends  my  catechism." 

164 


THREE  COMIC  GIANTS 


Casuist !  But  he  was  big  enough  to  deceive 
himself.  Such  casuistry  was  natural  to  the 
Englishman  of  Falstaffs  day,  who  took  his 
Catholicism  as  literally  as  any  Sicilian  peasant 
may  take  his  to-day.  Of  FalstafPs  unques- 
tioning faith  there  is  no  doubt  at  all;  his 
familiar  modes  of  address  of  the  Deity,  his 
appeal  when  dying,  his  probable  capacity  for 
robbing  a  friar  and  demanding  of  him  abso- 
lution, all  these  are  indications  of  a  simplicity 
so  great  that  casuistry  alone  could  rescue  him 
from  the  perilous  conclusions  drawn  from  his 
faith.  This  is  a  difficulty,  for  Falstaff  is  not 
entirely  the  Englishman  of  to-day ;  he  is  largely 
the  boisterous,  Latinised  Englishman  of  the 
pre-Reformation  period;  he  is  almost  the 
typical  Roman  Catholic,  who  preserved  through 
his  sinful  life  a  consciousness  that  faith  would 
save  him.  But  the  human  sides  of  Falstaff 
are  wholly  English;  his  love  of  meat  and 
drink,  his  sleepiness,  his  gout,  his  coarseness 
(which  was  free  from  depravity),  all  these  live 
to-day  in  the  average  Englishman  of  the 
well-to-do  classes,  that  Englishman  who  dis- 
165 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


likes  the  motor-car  but  keeps  a  hunter  he  is 
too  fat  to  ride,  who  prefers  suet  pudding  to 
any  hotel  bavaroise,  and  who,  despite  his  gout 
(inherited  from  Falstaff),  is  still  a  judge  of  port. 
That  Englishman  is  not  quite  Falstaff,  for 
he  has  lost  his  gaiety ;  he  does  not  dance  round 
the  maypole  of  Merrie  England;  he  is  op- 
pressed by  cares  and  expenditures,  he  fears 
democracy  and  no  longer  respects  aristocracy : 
the  old  banqueting-hall  in  which  Falstaff 
rioted  is  tumbling  about  his  ears.  Yet  he  con- 
tains the  Falstaffian  elements  and  preciously 
preserves  them.  He  is  no  poet,  but  he  still 
enshrines  within  him,  to  burst  out  from  among 
his  sons,  the  rich  lyrical  verse  which,  Mr. 
Chesterton  truly  says,  belongs  primarily  to 
the  English  race.  The  poetry  which  runs 
through  Falstaff  is  still  within  us,  and  his  phi- 
losophy radiates  from  our  midst.  The  broad 
tolerances  of  England,  her  taste  for  liberty  and 
ease,  her  occasional  bluster  and  her  boundless 
conceit,  all  these  are  Falstaffian  traits  and 
would  be  eternal  if  admixture  of  Celtic  blood 
did  not  slowly  modify  them.  Falstaff  contains 

166 


THREE  COMIC  GIANTS 


all  that  is  gross  in  England  and  much  that  is 
fine;  his  cowardice,  his  craft,  his  capacity  for 
flattery  are  qualifying  factors,  for  they  are  not 
English,  any  more  than  they  are  Chinese: 
they  are  human,  common.  But  the  outer 
Falstaff  is  English,  and  the  lawless  root  of 
him  is  yet  more  English,  for  there  is  not  a  race 
in  the  world  hates  the  law  more  than  the 
English  race.  Thus  the  inner,  adventurous 
Falstaff  is  the  Englishman  who  conquered 
every  sea  and  planted  his  flag  among  the 
savages;  he  is  perhaps  the  Englishman  who 
went  out  to  those  savages  with  the  Bible  in 
his  hand ;  he  is  the  unsteady  boy  who  ran  away 
to  sea,  the  privateersman  who  fought  the 
French  and  the  Dutch;  he  is  the  cheerful, 
greedy,  dull  and  obstinate  Englishman,  who 
is  so  wonderfully  stupid  and  so  wonderfully 
full  of  common-sense.  Falstaff  was  never 
crushed  by  adversity :  no  more  was  the  English 
race;  it  was,  like  him,  too  vain  and  too  opti- 
mistic, too  materially  bounded  by  its  im- 
mediate desires.  It  is  not,  therefore,  wild  to 
claim  him  as  the  gigantic  ancestor  and  kindly 
167 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


inspiration  of  the  priests,  merchants,  and 
soldiers  who  have  conquered  and  held  fields 
where  never  floated  the  lilies  of  the  French  or 
the  castles  of  the  Portuguese.  Too  dull  to  be 
beaten  and  too  big  to  be  moved,  Falstaff  was 
the  Englishman. 

3 

MUNCHAUSEN 

Exaggeration  is  a  subtle  weapon  and  it  must 
be  handled  subtly.  Handled  without  skill  it 
is  a  boomerang,  recoils  upon  the  one  who  uses 
it  and  makes  of  him  a  common  liar ;  under  the 
sway  of  a  master  it  is  a  long  bow  with  which 
splendid  shafts  may  be  driven  into  human  con- 
ceit and  human  folly.  There  have  been  many 
exaggerators  in  history  and  fiction  since  the  days 
of  Sindbad,  and  they  have  not  all  been  success- 
ful ;  some  were  too  small,  dared  not  stake  their 
reputation  upon  a  large  lie;  some  were  too 
serious  and  did  not  know  how  to  wink  at  hu- 
manity, put  it  in  good  temper  and  thus  earn 
its  tolerance;  and  some  did  not  believe  their 
own  stories,  which  was  fatal. 

168 


THREE  COMIC  GIANTS 


For  it  is  one  thing  to  exaggerate  and  another 
to  exaggerate  enough.  A  He  must  be  writ  so 
large  as  to  become  invisible ;  it  must  stand  as 
the  name  of  a  country  upon  a  map,  so  much 
larger  than  its  surroundings  as  to  escape  detec- 
tion. One  may  almost,  in  the  cause  of  inven- 
tion, parallel  the  saying  of  Machiavelli,  "If 
you  make  war,  spare  not  your  enemy",  and  say 
"If  you  lie,  let  it  not  be  by  halves" ;  let  the  lie 
be  terrific,  incredible,  for  it  will  then  cause  local 
anaesthesia  of  the  brain,  compel  unreasoning 
acceptance  in  the  stunned  victim.  If  the  ex- 
aggerator  shrinks  from  this  course  his  lie  will 
not  pass ;  it  might  have  passed,  and  I  venture 
a  paradox,  if  it  had  been  gigantic  enough.  The 
gigantic  quality  in  lies  needs  definition;  evi- 
dently the  little  "white"  lie  is  beyond  count, 
while  the  lie  with  a  view  to  a  profit,  the  self- 
protective  lie,  the  patriotic  lie  and  the  hysteri- 
cal, vicious  lie  follow  it  into  obscurity.  One 
lie  alone  remains,  the  splendid,  purposeless  lie, 
born  of  the  joy  of  life.  That  is  the  lie  of  bragga- 
docio, a  shouting,  rich  thing,  the  mischievous, 
arch  thing  beloved  of  Munchausen.  The  Baron 
169 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


hardly  lied  to  impress  his  friends;  he  lied  to 
amuse  them  and  amuse  himself.  For  him  a 
lie  was  a  hurrah  and  a  loud,  resonant  hurrah, 
because  it  was  big  enough. 

In  the  bigness  of  the  lie  is  the  gigantic  quality 
of  the  liar.  If,  for  instance,  we  assume  that 
no  athlete  has  ever  leapt  higher  than  seven  feet, 
it  is  a  lie  to  say  that  one  has  leapt  eight.  But 
it  is  not  a  gigantic  He :  it  is  a  mean,  stupid  lie. 
The  giant  must  not  stoop  so  low ;  he  must  leap, 
not  eight  feet,  but  eight  score,  eight  hundred. 
He  must  leap  from  nebula  to  nebula.  If  he 
does  not  claim  to  have  achieved  the  incredible, 
he  is  incredible  in  the  gigantic  sense.  Likewise 
he  is  not  comic  unless  he  can  shock  our  imagina- 
tion by  his  very  enormity.  We  do  not  laugh 
at  the  pigmy  who  claims  an  eight-foot  leap : 
we  sneer.  Humour  has  many  roots,  and  ex- 
aggeration is  one  of  them,  for  it  embodies  the 
essential  incongruous ;  thus  we  need  the  in- 
congruity of  contrast  between  the  little  strutting 
man  and  the  enormous  feat  he  claims  to  have 
achieved.  •  (- 

If  Munchausen  is  comic,  it  is  because  he  is 
170 


THREE  COMIC  GIANTS 


not  afraid ;  his  godfather,  the  Critical  Review,1 
rightly  claimed  that  "the  marvellous  had  never 
been  carried  to  a  more  whimsical  and  ludicrous 
extent."  Because  he  was  not  afraid,  we  say 
"Absurd  person",  and  laugh,  not  at  but  with 
him.  We  must  laugh  at  the  mental  picture  of 
the  Lithuanian  horse  who  so  bravely  carried 
his  master  while  he  fought  the  Turk  outside 
Oczakow,  only  to  be  cut  hi  two  by  the  port- 
cullis .  .  .  and  then  greedily  drank  at  a  foun- 
tain, drank  and  drank  until  the  fountain  nearly 
ran  dry  because  the  water  spouted  from  his 
severed  (but  still  indomitable)  trunk ! .  The 
impossible  is  the  comedy  of  Munchausen ;  when 
he  approaches  the  possible  his  mantle  seems 
to  fall  from  him.  For  instance,  in  a  contest 
with  a  bear,  or  rather  one  of  the  contests,  for 
Munchausen  seemed  to  encounter  bears  wher- 
ever he  went,  he  throws  a  bladder  of  spirits  into 
the  brute's  face,  so  that,  blinded  by  the  liquor, 
it  rushes  away  and  falls  over  a  precipice.  This 
is  a  blemish ;  a  mortal  hunter  might  thus  have 
saved  himself  with  his  whisky-flask ;  this  is  not 

1  December,  1785. 
171 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


worthy  of  Munchausen.  For  Munchausen,  to 
be  comic,  must  do  what  we  cannot  do,  thrust 
his  hand  into  the  jaws  of  a  wolf,  push  on,  seize 
him  by  the  tail  and  turn  him  inside  out.  Then 
he  can  leave  us  with  this  vision  before  our  eyes 
of  the  writhing  animal  nimbly  treated  as  an  old 
glove. 

In  such  scenes  as  these  contests  with  bears, 
wolves,  lions,  crocodiles,  the  Baron  is  the  chief 
actor,  plays  the  part  of  comedian,  but  he  is  big 
enough  to  shed  round  himself  a  zone  of  comic 
light.  The  giant  makes  comedy  as  he  walks; 
notably,  in  St.  Petersburg,  he  runs  from  a  mad 
dog,  discarding  his  fur  coat  in  his  hurry,  and 
that,  so  far  as  he  is  concerned,  is  the  end  of  the 
adventure.  But  a  comic  fate  pursues  Mun- 
chausen, for  his  fur  coat,  bitten  by  the  mad  dog, 
develops  hydrophobia,  leaps  at  and  destroys 
companion  clothing,  until  its  master  arrives  in 
time  to  see  it  "falling  upon  a  fine  full-dress  suit 
which  he  shook  and  tossed  in  an  unmerciful 
manner."  That  is  an  example  of  the  comic 
zone  in  which  Munchausen  revolves;  round 
him  the  inanimate  lives,  is  animated  by  his  own 
172 


THREE  COMIC   GIANTS 


life-lust  until  the  "it"  of  things  vanishes  into 
the  magic  "he." 

It  is  a  pity,  from  the  purely  comic  point  of 
view,  that  the  Baron  should  so  uniformly  domi- 
nate circumstances.  A  victorious  hero  is  sel- 
dom so  mirth-making  as  is  the  ridiculous  and 
ridiculed  Tartarin;  we  find  relief  when  Mun- 
chausen  fails  to  throw  a  piece  of  ordnance  across 
the  Dardanelles,  and  when  he  shatters  his 
chariot  against  the  rock  he  thus  decapitates 
and  makes  into  Table  Mountain.  His  failure, 
injurious  to  his  gigantic  quality,  is  essential  to 
his  comic  quality,  for  the  reader  often  cries  out, 
in  presence  of  his  flaming  victories  :  "Accursed 
sun!  Will  you  never  set?"  But  the  sun  of 
Munchausen  will  never  set.  For  a  moment  it 
may  be  obscured  by  a  passing  cloud,  while  its 
powerful  rays  rebelliously  glow  through  the  clot 
of  mist  and  maintain  the  outline  of  the  Baron's 
wicked  little  eye,  but  set  it  cannot :  is  it  not  in 
its  master's  power  to  juggle  with  moons  and 
arrest  the  steeds  of  Apollo  ? 

Demigodly,  the  giant  must  see  but  not  judge, 
for  one  cannot  judge  when  one  is  so  far  away. 
i73 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


Thus  Munchausen  has  but  few  sneers  for  little 
mankind;  he  observes  that  the  people  of  an 
island  choose  as  governors  a  man  and  his  wife 
who  were  "plucking  cucumbers  on  a  tree" 
because  they  fell  from  the  tree  on  the  tyrant 
of  the  isle  and  destroyed  him,  but  he  does  not 
seem  to  see  anything  singular  in  this  method 
of  government.  Nor  has  he  an  expressed  scoff 
for  the  College  of  Physicians  because  no  deaths 
happened  on  earth  while  it  was  suspended  in 
the  air.  The  scoff  is  there,  but  it  is  not  ex- 
pressed by  Munchausen ;  he  takes  the  earth 
in  his  hand,  remarks  "Odd  machine,  this",  and 
lays  it  down  again.  And  it  may  be  too  much 
to  say  "odd";  though  Munchausen  expresses 
astonishment  from  time  to  time  it  is  not 
vacuous  astonishment;  it  is  reasonable,  meas- 
ured astonishment,  that  of  a  modern  tourist 
in  Baedekerland.  Thus,  in  his  view,  poli- 
ticians, rulers,  pedagogues,  apothecaries,  ex- 
plorers are  not  subjects  for  his  sling:  they 
are  curiosities. 

He  stares  at  these  curiosities  with  simple 
wonder.    He  does  not  see  the  world  as  a  joke, 


THREE  COMIC   GIANTS 


but  as  an  earnest  and  extraordinary  thing.  He 
is  always  ready  to  be  mildly  surprised,  and  he 
is  never  sceptical ;  that  is,  he  never  doubts  the 
possibility  of  the  impossible  when  it  happens 
to  him :  he  gravely  doubts  it  when  it  happens 
to  anybody  else.  Thus  it  is  clear  that  he  does 
not  think  much  of  Mr.  Lemuel  Gulliver,  that 
his  chief  enemy  is  his  old  rival  Baron  de  Tott. 
If  he  were  not  so  polite,  Munchausen  would  call 
de  Tott  a  plain  liar;  he  refrains  and  merely 
outstrips  the  upstart,  as  a  gentleman  should  do. 
Munchausen  sees  the  world  in  terms  of  him- 
self ;  he  would  have  no  faith  in  the  marvellous 
escapes  of  von  Trenck,  Jack  Sheppard,  and 
Monte  Cristo.  "  I ",  says  Munchausen,  and  the 
rivals  may  withdraw.  He  does  not  even  fear 
imitation,  and  if  he  were  confronted  with 
Dickens's  story  of  the  lunars  in  Household 
Words,  or  with  his  French  imitator,  M.  de  Crac, 
he  would  chivalrously  say:  "Most  creditable, 
but  I  ..."  Nothing  hi  Munchausen  is  so 
colossal  as  his  "I."  Like  the  Gauls  he  fears 
naught,  save  that  the  sky  will  fall  upon  his  head, 
and  I  am  not  sure  that  he  fears  even  that :  the 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


accident  might  enable  him  to  make  interesting 
notes  on  heaven. 

There  is,  perhaps,  unjustified  levity  in  this 
surmise  of  mine,  for  Munchausen  is  a  pious 
man.  When,  in  Russia,  he  covers  an  old  man 
with  his  cloak,  a  voice  from  heaven  calls  to 
him:  "You  will  be  rewarded,  my  son,  for  this 
in  time."  It  must  have  been  the  voice  of 
St.  Hubert,  the  patron  to  whom  Munchausen 
readily  paid  his  homage,  for  Munchausen  simply 
believed  in  him,  liked  to  think  that  "some  pas- 
sionate holy  sportsman,  or  sporting  abbot  or 
bishop,  may  have  shot,  planted  and  fixed  the 
cross  between  the  antlers  of  St.  Hubert's  stag." 
But  his  piety  is  personal ;  he  believes  that  the 
voice  is  for  him  alone,  that  St.  Hubert  is  his 
own  saint.  Gigantic  Munchausen  shuts  out 
his  own  view  of  the  world.  His  shadow  falls 
upon  and  obscures  it.  That  is  why  he  so  con- 
tinuously brags.  The  most  resolute  horsemen 
shrink  from  a  wild  young  horse,  but  Mun- 
chausen tames  him  in  half  an  hour  and  makes 
him  dance  on  the  tea-table  without  breaking 
a  single  cup;  the  Grand  Seignior  discards  his 

176 


THREE   COMIC  GIANTS 


own  envoy  and  employs  him  on  state  business 
at  Cairo ;  he  makes  a  cannon  off  a  cannon-ball, 
"having  long  studied  the  art  of  gunnery" ;  he 
does  away  (in  his  third  edition)  with  the  French 
persecutors  of  Marie  Antoinette.  He,  always 
he,  is  the  actor ;  he  is  not  the  chief  actor,  he  is 
the  sole  actor,  and  the  rest  of  the  world  is  the 
audience. 

So  simply  and  singly  does  he  believe  in  him- 
self that  his  gigantic  quality  is  assured.  He 
disdains  to  imitate ;  when  confined  in  the  belly 
of  the  great  fish  he  does  not  wait  like  Sindbad, 
or  wait  and  pray  like  Jonah :  Baron  Mun- 
chausen  dances  a  hornpipe.  He  is  quite  sure 
that  he  will  escape  from  the  fish :  the  fish  is 
large,  but  not  large  enough  to  contain  the  spirit 
of  a  Munchausen ;  and  he  is  sure  that  the  story 
is  true.  There  is  nothing  in  any  adventure  to 
show  that  the  Baron  doubted  its  accuracy,  and 
we  must  not  conclude  from  his  threat  in  Chap- 
ter VIII :  "If  any  gentleman  will  say  he  doubts 
the  truth  of  this  story,  I  will  fine  him  a  gallon 
of  brandy  and  make  him  drink  it  at  one 
draught,"  that  he  knew  himself  for  a  liar.  As 
177 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


a  man  of  the  world  he  recognised  that  his  were 
wonderful  stories,  and  he  expected  to  encounter 
unbelief,  but  he  did  not  encounter  it  within 
himself.  No,  Munchausen  accepted  his  own 
enormity,  gravely  believed  that  he  "made  it  a 
rule  always  to  speak  within  compass."  If  he 
winked  at  the  world  as  he  told  his  tales  it  was 
not  because  he  did  not  believe  in  them;  he 
winked  because  he  was  gay  and,  mischievously 
enough,  liked  to  keep  the  world  on  the  tenter- 
hooks of  scepticism  and  gullibility.  He  did 
not  even  try  to  truckle  to  his  audience,  to  be  in 
any  way  consistent ;  thus,  when  entangled  with 
the  eagle  he  rides  in  the  branches  of  a  tree,  he 
dares  not  jump  for  fear  of  being  killed  .  .  .  while 
he  has  previously  fallen  with  impunity  some  five 
miles,  on  his  descent  from  the  moon,  with  such 
violence  as  to  dig  a  hole  nine  fathoms  deep. 

No,  this  precursor  of  Bill  Adams,  who  saved 
Gibraltar  for  General  Elliott,  simply  believed. 
Like  Falstaff,  like  Tartarin,  he  suffered  from 
mirage;  though  some  of  his  adventures  are 
dreams,  monstrous  pictures  of  facts  so  small 
that  we  cannot  imagine  them,  others  are  but 
178 


THREE  COMIC  GIANTS 


the  distortions  of  absolutely  historic  affairs. 
No  doubt  Munchausen  saw  a  lion  fight  a  croco- 
dile :  it  needed  no  gigantic  flight  for  him  to 
believe  that  he  cut  off  the  lion's  head  while  it 
was  still  alive,  if  he  actually  cut  it  off  "  to  make 
sure"  when  it  was  dead;  and  though  he  did 
not  tie  his  horse  to  a  snow-surrounded  steeple, 
he  may  have  tied  him  to  a  post  and  found,  in  the 
morning,  that  the  snow  had  so  thawed  as  to  leave 
the  horse  on  a  taut  bridle ;  assuredly  he  did  not 
kill  seventy-three  brace  of  wildfowl  with  one 
shot,  but  the  killing  of  two  brace  was  a  feat  noble 
enough  to  be  magnified  into  the  slaughter  of  a 
flight. 

Munchausen  lied,  but  he  lied  honestly,  that 
is  to  himself  before  all  men.  For  he  was  a 
gentleman,  a  gentleman  of  high  lineage  the 
like  of  whom  rode  and  drove  in  numbers  along 
the  eighteenth  century  roads.  His  own  career, 
or  rather  that  of  his  historian,  Raspe,1  har- 
monises with  his  personal  characteristics,  re- 
veals his  Teutonic  origin,  and  it  matters  little 

1  See  Mr.  Thomas  Seccombe's  brilliant  introduction  to 
the  Lawrence  and  Bullen  edition,  1895. 
179 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


whether  he  was  the  German  "Munchausen" 
or  the  Dutch  Westphalian  "Munnikhouson." 
The  first  sentence  of  his  first  chapter  tells  of 
his  beard ;  his  family  pride  stares  us  everywhere 
in  the  face;  Munchausen  claims  descent  from 
the  wife  of  Uriah  (and  he  might  have  been  inno- 
cent enough  to  accept  Ananias  as  a  forebear), 
and  knows  that  noblesse  oblige,  for,  says  he  to 
the  Lady  Fragantia  when  receiving  from  her  a 
plume:  "I  swear  .  .  .  that  no  savage,  tyrant, 
or  enemy  upon  the  face  of  the  earth  shall  despoil 
me  of  this  favour,  while  one  drop  of  the  blood 
of  the  Munchausens  doth  circulate  in  my 
veins!"  Quixotic  Munchausen,  it  is  well  that 
you  should,  in  later  adventures,  meet  and  some- 
what humiliate  the  Spanish  Don.  For  you  are  a 
gentleman  of  no  English  and  cold-blooded  pat- 
tern, even  though  you  buy  your  field-glasses  at 
Dollonds's  and  doubtless  your  clothes  at  the  top 
of  St.  James's  Street.  Too  free,  too  unrestrained 
to  be  English,  you  maintain  an  air  of  fashion, 
you  worship  at  the  shrine  of  any  Dulcinea. 

Munchausen  has  no  use  for  women,  save  as 
objects  for  worship;    they  must  not  serve  or 

180 


THREE  COMIC   GIANTS 


co-operate ;  for  him  they  are  inspiration,  beau- 
tiful things  before  whom  he  bows,  whom  he 
compliments  in  fulsome  wise ;  he  is  preoccupied 
by  woman  whenever  he  is  not  in  the  field ;  he 
has  chivalrous  oaths  for  others  than  the  Lady 
Fragantia ;  he  makes  the  horse  mount  the  tea- 
table  for  the  ladies'  pleasure ;  he  receives  grace- 
fully the  proposals  of  Catherine  of  Russia ;  he 
is  the  favourite  of  the  Grand  Seignior's  favour- 
ite ;  he  is  haunted  by  the  Lady  Fragantia,  who 
was  "like  a  summer's  morning,  all  blushing  and 
full  of  dew." 

Polite  and  gallant  as  any  cavalier,  Mun- 
chausen  carries  in  him  the  soul  of  a  professor; 
he  is  minute,  he  kills  no  twoscore  beasts,  but 
exactly  forty-one ;  every  little  thing  counts  for 
him,  as  if  he  were  a  student :  Montgolfier  and 
his  balloon,  architecture,  and  the  amazing  ety- 
mology for  which  "Vide  Otrckocsus  de  Orig- 
Hung."  A  swordsman  and  a  scholar  he  recalls 
those  reiters  who  fled  from  Kings  into  monas- 
teries, there  to  labour  as  Benedictines.  And 
he  has  Teutonic  appetites.  Indeed  nothing  is 
so  Germanic  as  the  Baron's  perpetual  concern 
181 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


with  food :  he  remembers  how  good  was  the 
cherry-sauce  made  from  the  cherries  that  grew 
out  of  the  stag's  forehead ;  he  gloats  over  a  con- 
tinent of  cheese  and  a  sea  of  wine;  even  on 
eagleback  he  finds  bladders  of  gin  and  good 
roast-beef-fruit ;  bread-fruit,  plum-pudding- 
fruit  (hot),  Cape  wine,  Canadian  sugar,  fricassee 
of  pistols,  pistol-bullets,  gunpowder  sauce,  all 
these  figure  in  his  memoirs.  And  if,  some- 
times, he  is  a  little  gross,  as  when  he  stops  a  leak 
in  a  ship  by  sitting  upon  it,  which  he  can  do 
because  he  is  of  Dutch  extraction,  he  confirms 
completely  the  impression  we  have  of  him :  a 
gallant  gentleman,  brave  in  the  field,  lusty  at 
the  trencher,  gay  in  the  boudoir. 

Good  Munchausen,  you  strut  large  about  the 
Kingdom  of  Loggerheads,  debonair,  tolerant, 
confident;  you  believe  in  yourself,  because  so 
large  that  you  cannot  overlook  yourself ;  you  be- 
lieve in  yourself  because  you  tower  and  thus 
amaze  humanity;  and  you  believe  in  yourself 
because  you  are  as  enormously  credulous  as  you 
would  have  us  be.  Thus,  because  you  believe 
in  yourself,  you  are :  you  need  no  Berkeley  to 

demonstrate  you. 

182 


VII 
THE   ESPERANTO  OF  ART 

IT  is  established  and  accepted  to-day  that  a 
painter  may  not  like  music,  that  a  writer  may 
yawn  in  a  picture-gallery  :  though  we  proclaim 
that  art  is  universal,  it  certainly  is  not  universal 
for  the  universe.  This  should  not  surprise  us 
who  know  that  van  Gogh  wrote:  "To  paint 
and  to  love  women  is  incompatible";  van 
Gogh  was  right  for  himself,  which  does  not  mean 
that  he  was  right  for  everybody,  and  I  will  not 
draw  from  his  dictum  the  probably  incorrect 
conclusion  that  "To  paint  and  to  love  literature 
is  incompatible."  But  van  Gogh,  who  had 
not  read  Bergson,  was  indicating  clearly  enough 
that  he  knew  he  must  canalise  his  powers,  there- 
fore exclude  from  his  emotional  purview  all 
things  which  did  not  appertain  directly  to  his 
own  form  of  art. 

Form  of  art!  Those  three  words  hold  the 
183 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


difficulty  of  mutual  understanding  among  art- 
ists. While  sympathising  with  van  Gogh  in 
his  xenophobia,  I  cannot  accept  that  because 
certain  artists  could  not  appreciate  certain 
forms  of  art,  no  artist  can  understand  another 
whose  form  is  alien  to  him.  There  is,  there 
must  be  a  link  between  the  painter,  the  sculptor, 
the  writer,  the  musician,  the  actor,  between  the 
poet  in  words  and  the  one,  to-day  most  common, 
who  wishes  to  express  himself  in  the  deeds  of 
his  own  life.  For  art  is,  we  are  assured  thereof, 
all  of  one  stuff.  A  symphony  and  a  poem  may 
be  allotropic  forms  of  the  same  matter :  to  use 
a  common  simile,  there  is  red  phosphorus  and 
there  is  yellow,  but  both  are  phosphorus.  Like- 
wise there  are  different  forms  of  art,  but  there 
is  only  one  art. 

It  is  important  that  artists  should  understand 
one  another  so  that  conflict  may  arise  from  their 
impressions,  so  that  they  may  form  a  critical 
brotherhood.  Some,  to-day,  are  able  to  grasp 
one  another's  meaning  and  yet  find  it  difficult, 
because  every  form  of  art  has  its  own  jargon, 
to  express  what  they  mean;  they  can  grasp 

184 


THE  ESPERANTO  OF  ART 


that  the  painter  equally  with  the  writer  is  striv- 
ing to  express  himself,  but  they  fail  to  phrase 
their  appreciation  and  their  criticism  because 
writers  cannot  talk  of  masses  or  painters  of 
style.  There  stands  between  them  a  hedge  of 
technique ;  so  thick  is  it  that  often  they  cannot 
see  the  spirit  of  the  works;  their  difficulty  is 
one  of  terms.  Now  I  do  not  suggest  that  the 
musician  should  study  Praxiteles  and  himself 
carve  marble ;  he  is  better  employed  expressing 
his  own  passion  in  the  Key  of  C.  But  I  do  feel 
that  if  technical  terms  are  the  preserve  of  each 
form  of  art,  general  terms  are  not;  that  con- 
tinuity, rhythm,  harmony,  to  quote  but  a  few, 
have  a  precise  meaning,  that  they  are  inherent  in 
form  of  art  because  they  are  inherent  in  art  itself. 
The  following,  then,  is  a  forlorn  attempt  to 
find  the  common  language,  the  esperanto  of  art. 
It  is  made  up  of  general  terms  (in  italics) ;  it 
represents  no  more  than  a  personal  point  of 
view,  and  is  for  this  reason  laid  down  in  a  tenta- 
tive spirit :  it  is  not  a  solution  but  a  fingerpost. 
Order  being  a  necessary  antidote  for  the  ab- 
struse, I  have  divided  the  terms  into  groups, 
185 


according  to  their  nature,  to  the  dimension  they 
affect  or  the  matter  to  which  they  refer.  Fol- 
lowing this  line  of  thought  we  find  that  works 
of  art  affect  us  in  virtue  of  four  properties: 
their  power,  their  logic,  their  movement,  and 
their  attitude;  this  leads  us  to  four  groups  of 
properties : 

Group  A  (Volumetric) :  Concentration,  Relief, 
Density,  Depth. 

Group  B  (Linear) :  Linking,  Continuity. 

Group  C  (Kinetic) :  Rhythm,  Intensity,  Reac- 
tion, Key,  Culmination. 

Group  D  (Static) :  Grace,  Balance,  Harmony. 

This  is  a  rough  classification,  for  an  opera 
does  not  necessarily  compare  with  a  square  rood 
of  paint  or  a  novel  of  Tolstoyan  length ;  indeed, 
on  the  volumetric  basis,  an  opera  may  have  less 
bulk  than  a  sonnet. 

Group  A  (Volumetric).  By  concentration 
we  mean  the  quality  of  conveying  a  great  deal 
within  a  small  space.  It  follows  that  concentra- 
tion is  in  inverse  ratio  to  area,  though  it  does 
not  follow  that  area  is  in  inverse  ratio  to  con- 
centration. While  "Anna  Karenin"  is  an  enor- 

186 


THE  ESPERANTO  OF  ART 


mous  novel,  it  is  as  concentrated  as  the  sonnet 
of  d'Arvers ;  on  the  other  hand,  Francis  Thomp- 
son's "Arab  Love  Song"  is  more  concentrated 
than  the  complete  works  of  Mrs.  Barclay; 
while  any  Rubens  is  more  concentrated  than  a 
modern  miniature,  an  intaglio  may  be  more 
concentrated  than  twenty  square  yards  of 
Delacroix.  We  nullify  areas,  therefore,  and 
must  lay  down  that  the  test  of  concentration  is 
the  effect :  if  the  painter  realises  that  the  author 
has  felt  all  he  wrote,  if  the  writer  sees  that  every 
line  was  necessary,  then  both  can  be  sure  that 
they  are  respectively  in  presence  of  concen- 
trated works. 

Likewise  with  relief.  A  bas-relief  may  have 
none.  A  fresco  may.  Relief  then  is  a  matter 
of  contrast,  as  is  shown  especially  in  the  mosaics 
of  Taj  Mahal;  but  its  nature  is  easily  seen  if 
we  compare  prose  with  paint : 

"He  stood  at  the  edge  of  the  sea  while  the  waves 
crept  towards  him,  nearer  and  nearer,  sinuously 
flowing  and  ebbing,  but  ever  nearer.  Ever." 

I  give  this  as  an  instance,  not  as  a  fragment  of 
literature.    The  lonely  "ever"  gives  relief  to 
187 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


the  sentence  of  twenty-four  words  if  we  assume 
that  another  long  sentence  follows.  (If  no 
sentence  follows,  "ever"  is  no  longer  relief  but 
culmination,  see  Group  C.)  The  painter  ren- 
ders the  same  effect  by  a  more  vivid  line  of  foam 
in  the  middle  distance,  the  musician  by  inter- 
posing a  treble  motif  between  basses.  Thus, 
if  we  find  variety  of  sentence,  variety  of  tone 
we  have  relief. 

Density  and  Depth  need  not  detain  us  long. 
Flaubert,  the  Psalms,  Jacob  Epstein's  "Oscar 
Wilde",  the  Eroica  and  Velasquez  all  give  the 
sensation  we  call  by  those  names ;  we  mean  by 
them  that  each  contains  a  suggestion  of  some- 
thing behind.  Atmospheric  quality,  then,  to- 
gether with  thought  withdrawn,  echo  unheard 
and  space  unlimned,  are  the  bases  on  which  the 
two  terms  rest.  The  suggestion  that  this  "be- 
hind" exists  is  of  course  essential,  for  we  must 
not  conclude  that  where  there  is  nothing  to  be 
seen  there  is  something  to  be  guessed:  there 
must  be  no  guessing,  but  if  a  feeling  of  reserve 
is  created,  then  density  and  depth  exist. 

Group  B  (Linear).  The  quality  of  linking 
1 88 


THE  ESPERANTO  OF  ART 


is  opposed  to  the  quality  of  discord,  though  a 
discord  may  prove  to  be  a  link.  The  most 
perfect  instances  of  linking  and  continuity,  for 
I  almost  identify  the  terms,  are  the  solar  spec- 
trum and  the  song  of  the  lark,  but  in  the  field  of 
art  we  must  be  content  with  the  gamut,  the 
sequence  of  shades  and  the  concatenation  of 
phrases.  In  prose : 

"The  bird  rose  up  into  the  air,  and  its  wings 
beat  slowly.  The  air  was  laden  with  mist. 
The  bird  rose  towards  the  clouds  ..."  is  an  in- 
stance where  there  is  a  solution  of  continuity, 
which  could  be  remedied  if  the  second  sentence 
were  related  to  the  flight  of  the  bird.  And  the 
same  lack  of  continuity  would  exist  if  the  painter 
of  a  harlequin  were  to  make  his  skull-cap  brown, 
if  in  a  pause  of  some  work  of  Locatelli  the  musi- 
cian interposed  (however  skilfully  and  gradu- 
ally) some  characteristic  Grieg  chords. 

It  does  not,  of  course,  follow  that  a  discord 
is  discontinuous.  Providing  it  recurs  within 
the  scheme  of  the  work,  as  the  clashes  in 
"Elektra",  the  sequence  of  discords  becomes  a 
sequence  of  links,  and  we  arrive  at  this  paradox, 
189 


that  it  is  the  solutions  of  continuity  provide 
the  continuity,  while  the  apparently  continuous 
portions  of  the  work  are  carried  by  the  discord- 
ant sections.  Thus  there  is  continuity  in  the 
Louvre  Ghirlandajo  because  equivalent,  if 
minor,  discords  repeat  the  motif  of  the  red 
mantle  in  two  other  portions  of  the  picture. 
The  relation  of  the  discords  is  sometimes  vital 
to  more  than  continuity,  namely  to  rhythm 
(Group  C). 

With  Group  C  (Kinetic)  we  touch  the  most 
vital  portion  of  the  subject,  for  the  kinetic 
quality  in  art  amounts  to  the  quality  of  life  in 
man.  And  its  chief  component  is  rhythm.  If 
rhythm  be  taken  as  a  condition  of  internal  move- 
ment within  the  inanimate,  as  a  suggestion  of 
expanding  and  retracting  life,  of  phrases  (musi- 
cal, pictorial  or  literary)  that  come  to  an  in- 
evitable resolution,  it  is  seen  that  its  presence 
in  a  work  of  art  must  baffle  until  it  is  realised 
under  what  guise  it  appears.  A  simple  instance 
of  prose  rhythm  is : 

"The  wayfarer  stopped  by  the  well.  He 
looked  within  its  depths  and  the  water  was  far 

190 


THE  ESPERANTO  OF  ART 


below.  Idly  he  dropped  a  pebble  between  the 
walls;  and  it  seemed  minutes  while  he  waited 
until  the  water  sped  its  thanks." 

This  is  not  metrical  but  rhythmic  prose,  and 
it  would  be  wearisome  if  the  rhythm  were  not 
altered  from  paragraph  to  paragraph;  short 
sentences  alternate  with  long  at  fixed  intervals, 
or  passive  verbs  are  inset  between  actives,  while 
Gothic  words  juxtaposed  to  Latin,  or  adjectival 
combinations,  produce  the  same  effect  of  rise 
and  fall.  The  rhythm  may  be  regular  as  the 
movement  of  a  woman's  breast  or  spasmodic 
within  the  regular  as  the  flight  of  a  gull. 

Pictorially  rhythm  is  best  gauged  by  certain 
tapestries  based  on  the  flower  backgrounds  of 
Fergusson  and  Anne  Estelle  Rice.  Assume  a 
black  square  of  cloth ;  if  the  flowers  are  grouped 
thus,  from  left  to  right :  dark  red,  pink,  white, 
there  is  no  rhythm,  for  the  mental  line  is  a  mere 
downgrade ;  if  they  are  grouped :  dark  red,  light 
blue,  dark  green,  there  is  no  rhythm,  for  the 
mental  line  is  a  mere  curve,  a  circular  or  perhaps 
parabolic  basin ;  but  if  the  grouping  amounts 
to :  dark  red,  pink,  light  blue,  black,  light  green, 
191 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


cream,  dark  brown,  there  is  a  sensation  of  ebb 
and  flow,  rise  and  fall,  rhythm.  And  this  ap- 
plies to  drawing  also,  if  we  accept  that  colour 
is  indicated  by  line,  that  lines  are  colours  and 
that  colours  are  tenses.  That  line  can  indicate 
colour  is  beyond  denial,  for  we  accept  that  colour 
is  not  material  while  tone  is  material.  Colour 
being  the  relation  between  an  impression  and 
the  impression  of  colourlessness,  and  tone  being 
the  resultant  translation  of  the  intensity  of  the 
colour,  then  it  is  feasible  to  reproduce  a  red  and 
blue  combination  by  a  green  and  yellow  com- 
bination of  equal  contrast.1  Therefore  a  com- 
bination of  blacks  may  be  made  to  balance  a 
combination  of  even  seven  colours,  provided 
the  relative  intensity  (amount)  of  the  blacks 
is  in  a  true  relation,  in  tone,  with  the  relative 
intensity  of  the  colours.  C.  R.  W.  Neinison 
achieves  this  with  greys  and  blacks. 

The  quality  of  rhythm  being  obvious  in  music 
needs  no  discussion;  it  is  the  only  form  of 

1  Hence,  if  the  colour  relations  are  maintained,  it  is  cor- 
rect to  represent  a  blue-eyed  rubicund  man  by  red  eyes  and 
a  violet  face. 

192 


THE  ESPERANTO  OF  ART 


rhythm  the  popular  can  recognise,  but  if  we 
accept  the  principles  of  grouping  in  phrase  and 
colour,  no  musician  will  fail  to  recognise  a  sara- 
bande  in  a  dance  of  Matisse  or  in  the  posturings 
of  Kellerman's  clown. 

As  for  intensity,  with  which  goes  reaction,  for 
the  first  cannot  exist  without  the  second,  it  is 
naturally  brought  about  by  the  rhythmic  focus- 
ing of  the  subject's  attention  upon  words, 
colours  or  notes.  Intensity  is  marked,  for 
instance,  by  the  triplets  of  the  Venusberg  music, 
their  continual,  slow  billowing ;  it  can  be  found, 
less  easily,  in  phrases  and  colours,  but  it  must 
exist  if  the  work  is  art.  In  prose  it  is  marked 
by  a  general  nervousness  of  form  and  word : 

"Upon  the  crag  the  tower  pointed  to  the  sky 
like  a  finger  of  stone,  and  about  its  base  were 
thick  bushes,  which  had  burst  forth  into  flower 
patches  of  purple  and  scarlet.  The  air  was 
heavy  with  their  scent." 

Here  the  intensity  is  confined  within  the  simile 
and  the  colour  scheme;  the  intervening  space 
corresponds  to  the  background  of  a  picture, 
while  the  final  short  sentence,  purposely  dulled, 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


is  the  reaction.  Evidently  (and  all  the  more  so 
as  I  have  chosen  a  pictorial  effect)  an  analogous 
intensity  could  be  obtained  in  a  painting :  the 
flower  patches  could  be  exaggerated  in  colour 
to  the  uttermost  limit  of  the  palette,  while  the 
reagent  final  sentence  was  figured  by  a  filmy 
treatment  of  the  atmosphere.  The  limit  to 
intensity  is  the  key  in  which  the  work  is  con- 
ceived. But  the  word  key  must  not  be  taken 
in  its  purely  musical  sense;  obviously,  within 
the  same  piece  the  governing  motif  must  not 
be  andante  at  the  beginning  and  presto  at  the 
end,  but  in  artistic  generalisations  it  must  be 
taken  as  the  spirit  that  informs  rather  than  as 
the  technical  rule  which  controls.  Thus,  in 
literature,  the  key  is  the  attitude  of  the  writer : 
if  in  one  part  of  the  book  his  thought  recalls 
Thackeray  and  in  another  Paul  de  Kock  the 
key  has  been  changed ;  and  again  if  the  left  side 
of  the  picture  is  pointillist,  the  right  side  cubist, 
the  key  has  been  changed.  I  choose  exag- 
gerated, almost  absurd  instances  to  make  the 
point  clear;  in  practice,  when  the  writer,  the 
musician,  or  the  painter  appears  to  have  seen 

194 


THE  ESPERANTO  OF  ART 


consistently,    the   key   he   has   worked   in   is 
steadfast. 

It  should  be  said  that  uniformity  of  key  does 
not  imply  absence  of  reaction:  there  is  room, 
while  the  key  remains  uniform,  for  the  juxta- 
position of  burlesque  and  romance,  just  as  there 
is  room  in  Holbein's  "Ambassadors"  for  the 
incomprehensible  object  in  the  foreground,  said 
to  be  a  pun  (Hohl  Bein).  But  the  key  needs 
to  be  kept  in  mind  as  its  maximum  expression 
is  the  culmination  of  the  effect.  The  culmination 
of  a  speech  is  in  its  peroration ;  of  a  poem  in  its 
incorporated  envoi.  Thus,  in  the  "Arab  Love 
Song",  the  culmination  is: 

"And  thou  what  needest  with  thy  tribe's  black 

tents 
Who  hast  the  red  pavilion  of  my  heart?" 

There  is  no  difficulty  there.  But  in  painting 
the  culmination  is  more  subtle.  It  consists  in 
the  isolation  of  the  chief  object.  Say  that  we 
have  from  left  to  right:  Black,  yellow,  dark 
brown,  light  blue,  dark  red ;  then  add  on  the 
extreme  right  crimson,  then  gold.  The  picture 
culminates  on  the  extreme  right,  with  the  result 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


that  attention  is  directed  there  and  that  any 
object  in  that  section  of  the  picture  benefits 
by  an  influence  about  equivalent  to  that  of  foot- 
lights. Culmination  involves  the  painter  in 
great  difficulties,  for  there  must  be  culmination, 
while  an  effect  in  the  wrong  place  may  destroy 
the  balance  of  his  work.  This  appertains  to 
Group  D  (Static).  Its  chief  quality,  balance, 
is  easily  denned  in  painting.  Where  there  is 
correspondence  between  every  section  of  the 
picture,  where  no  value  is  exaggerated,  balance 
exists.  Hence  the  failure  of  Futurism.  While 
the  Futurists  understand  very  well  intensity, 
reaction,  and  relief,  they  refuse  to  give  balance 
any  attention  at  all;  leaving  aside  the  ab- 
surdity of  rendering  the  mental  into  terms  of 
the  pictorial,  and  taking  as  an  instance  one  who 
was  once  less  Futurist  than  the  Futurists, 
Severini,  we  see  in  his  "Pan-pan  Dance"  how 
he  detached  himself  from  his  school :  he  at- 
tained balance  by  giving  every  object  an  equal 
intensity.  Evidently  if  there  are  no  clashes  of 
tone-values  there  must  be  balance,  and  the  in- 
stance serves  to  show  that  where  there  are 

196 


THE  ESPERANTO  OF  ART 


clashes  of  tone-values  balance  must  be  ensured 
by  the  artist's  hand.  There  is  always  balance 
in  the  purely  decorative ;  in  the  realistic  there 
is  balance  if  the  attention  of  the  beholder  is 
directed  simultaneously  to  the  several  points 
of  culmination  indicated  by  the  rhythm  of  the 
picture.  Thus  there  is  balance  in  Rothen- 
stein's  "Chloe"  because  the  rocks  on  the  right 
repeat  the  significance  of  the  rocks  on  the  left. 
Likewise  in  literature  there  is  balance  in 
certain  groupings  of  phrases : 

"The  waves  rolled  in.  Every  one,  edged 
with  foam,  curved  forward  to  kiss  the  sand. 
Silvery  in  the  sun  they  rolled.  And  they 
came  assured,  as  if  they  had  forgotten  that 
before  they  had  come  at  other  dawns,  only  to 
retire  the  inert  earth." 

This  is  almost  the  exact  "short-long-short- 
long"  of  waves  themselves,  and  there  is  balance 
because  each  short-long  grouping  figures  one 
curled  wave.  Nothing  clarifies  this  idea  so 
well  as  the  Morse  Code. 

With  perfect  balance  go  grace  and  harmony. 
While  grace  must  stand  by  itself  as  a  not  es- 
197 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


pecially  important  quality  because  it  is  not, 
need  not,  always  be  present,  harmony  must  be 
recognised  as  a  synonym  of  balance.  It  is 
only  because  grace  is  often  used  where  har- 
mony is  meant  that  it  finds  a  place  in  this 
glossary.  Obviously  there  is  no  grace  in  Ro- 
din's Balzac,  while  there  is  grace  in  every  note 
of  Lulli  and  Gliick;  by  grace  we  mean  the 
quality  of  lightness  we  find  in  Pater,  Mere- 
dith, Andre  Gide,  Mozart,  Watteau,  Dona- 
tello :  the  instances  suffice  to  indicate  the 
meaning,  while  harmony,  if  it  be  taken  as  a 
synonym  of  balance,  needs  no  further  explana- 
tion than  has  been  given  for  that  term. 

I  venture  to  repeat  in  conclusion  that  there 
is  nothing  dogmatic  about  these  ideas.  They 
are  subject  to  criticism  and  objection,  for  we 
are  groping  in  the  dark  towards  what  Mr. 
Leonard  Inkster  calls  the  standardisation  of 
artistic  terms ;  if  I  prefer  to  his  scientific  way 
the  more  inspired  suggestion  of  "esperanto", 
that  is  a  common  language  of  the  arts,  it  is 
without  fear  of  being  called  metaphysical. 
It  may  be  argued  that  a  purely  intellectual  at- 

198 


THE  ESPERANTO  OF  ART 


tempt  to  extract  and  correlate  the  inspirations 
of  forms  of  art  is  a  metaphysical  exercise 
doomed  to  failure  by  its  own  ambition.  I  do 
not  think  so.  For  art  is  universal  enough  to 
contain  all  the  appeals,  the  sensuous,  the  in- 
tellectual and,  for  those  who  perceive  it,  the 
spiritual ;  but  the  sensuous  is  incapable  of 
explanation  because  sensuousness  is  a  thing 
of  perceptions  which  vanish  as  soon  as  the 
brain  attempts  to  state  them  in  mental  terms ; 
and  the  spiritual,  which  I  will  define  much 
as  I  would  faith,  as  a  stimulation  produced 
by  a  thing  which  one  knows  to  be  inexistent, 
also  resists  analysis ;  if  we  are  to  bridge  the 
gulfs  that  separate  the  various  forms  of  art, 
some  intellectual  process  must  be  applied. 
Now  it  may  be  metaphysical  to  treat  of  the 
soul  in  terms  of  the  intellect,  but  the  intellect 
has  never  in  philosophic  matters  refrained 
from  laying  hands  upon  the  alleged  soul  of 
man;  I  see  no  reason,  therefore,  to  place  art 
higher  than  the  essence  of  human  life  and 
grant  it  immunity  from  attack  and  exegesis 
by  the  intellect.  Indeed,  the  intellect  in  its 
199 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


metaphysical  moods  is  alone  capable  of  solving 
the  riddle  of  artistic  sensation.  Once  denned 
by  intellect  and  applied  by  intellect,  the  es- 
peranto of  the  arts  may  well  serve  to  reconcile 
them  and  demonstrate  to  their  various  forms, 
against  their  will,  their  fundamental  unity. 


200 


VIII 
THE  TWILIGHT   OF   GENIUS 


GIVEN  that  the  attitude  of  the  modern  com- 
munity towards  genius  is  one  of  suspicion 
modified  by  fear,  I  am  inclined  to  wonder 
what  a  latter  day  Tarquinius  would  do  in 
the  garden  of  contemporary  thought.  The 
old  Superb  struck  off  the  heads  of  those  flowers 
grown  higher  than  their  fellows ;  he  was  an- 
cestor to  those  who  persecuted  Galileo,  Coper- 
nicus, Hargreaves,  Papin,  Manet,  all  the 
people  who  differed  from  their  brethren  and 
thus  engendered  the  greatest  malevolence  of 
which  man  is  capable  —  family  hatred.  I 
think  Tarquinius  has  but  himself  to  blame  if 
there  are  to-day  so  few  heads  to  strike  off. 
He  struck  off  so  many  that  in  a  spirit  of  self- 
protection  genius  bred  more  sparingly.  All 

2OI 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


allowances  made  for  the  hope  from  which  the 
thought  springs,  I  feel  that  we  live  on  a  soil 
watered  by  many  tears,  poor  ground  for  genius 
to  flourish  in,  where  now  and  then  it  may  sprout 
and  wither  into  success,  where  glory  is  trans- 
muted into  popularity,  where  beauty  is  spell- 
bound into  smartness.  My  general  impression 
is  that  genius  is  missing  and  unlikely  of  ap- 
pearance ;  weakly,  I  turn  to  the  past  and  say : 
"those  were  the  days",  until  I  remember  that 
in  all  times  people  spoke  of  the  past  and  said : 
"those  were  the  days."  For  the  past  is  never 
vile,  never  ugly :  it  has  the  immense  merit  of 
being  past.  But  even  so,  I  feel  that  in  certain 
periods,  in  certain  places,  genius  could  flourish 
better  than  it  does  in  the  midst  of  our  ele- 
vated railways  and  wireless  telesynographs. 

Our  period  is  perhaps  poor  in  genius  because 
it  is  so  rich  in  talent.  There  is  so  much  talent 
that  one  can  buy  any  amount  of  it  for  forty 
dollars  a  week,  and  a  great  deal  more  for  two 
lines  in  an  evening  paper.  Talent  is  the  foe 
of  genius;  it  is  the  offshoot  from  the  big 
tree,  which  cannot  itself  become  a  tree,  and 

202 


THE  TWILIGHT  OF  GENIUS 

yet  weakens  the  parent  stock.  Indeed,  it  may 
be  that  the  sunset  of  genius  and  the  sunrise  of 
democracy  happened  all  within  one  day.  In 
former  times,  so  few  men  had  access  to  learning 
that  they  formed  a  caste  without  jealousy, 
anxious  to  recruit  from  among  ambitious 
youth.  The  opportunities  of  the  common 
man  were  small ;  the  opportunities  of  the  un- 
common man  were  immense.  Perhaps  because 
of  this,  three  of  the  richest  epochs  in  mankind 
came  about;  the  self-made  merchant  writing 
to  his  son,  was  not  wrong  to  say  that  there  is 
plenty  of  room  at  the  top,  and  no  elevator; 
but  he  should  have  added  that  there  was  a  mob 
on  the  stairs  and  on  the  top  a  press  agency. 

My  general  impression  of  the  Medicis  is  a 
highly  select  society,  centering  round  a  Pla- 
tonic academy  which  radiated  the  only  avail- 
able culture  of  the  day,  the  Latin  and  the 
Greek.  War,  intrigue,  clerical  ambition,  pas- 
sion and  murder,  all  these  made  of  a  century 
a  coloured  background  against  which  stand 
out  any  flowers  that  knew  how  to  bloom.  The 
small,  parochial  society  of  the  Medicis  wanted 
203 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


flowers ;  to-day,  we  want  bouquets.  It  was 
the  same  in  the  big  period  that  includes  Eliza- 
beth, the  period  that  saw  Sydney,  Beaumont, 
Sir  Walter  Raleigh,  Shakespeare,  Spenser; 
here  again  a  nucleus  of  time  haloed  with  the 
golden  dust  of  thought,  as  a  fat  comet  draws 
its  golden  trail.  The  Elizabethan  period  was 
the  heroic  time  of  English  history,  the  time  of 
romance,  because  it  sought  the  unknown  land 
and  the  unknown  truth,  because  if  some  easily 
went  from  gutter  to  gallows,  others  as  easily 
found  their  way  from  gutter  to  palace.  This 
is  true  also  of  the  period  of  Louis  XIV,  an  in- 
ferior person,  of  barbarous  vanity,  of  negligent 
uxoriousness,  untiring  stratagem,  but  a  great 
man  all  the  same  because  greedy  of  all  that 
life  can  give,  whether  beautiful  women,  broad 
kingdoms,  or  sharp  intellects.  To  please  him, 
Moliere,  Boileau,  Racine,  and  many  of  less 
importance,  danced  their  little  dance  under 
the  umbrella  of  his  patronage.  They  are  still 
dancing,  and  Louis  XIV,  that  typical  bigwig, 
stands  acquitted. 

When  one  thinks  of  these  periods,  one  is, 
204 


THE  TWILIGHT  OF   GENIUS 


perhaps,  too  easily  influenced,  for  one  com- 
pares them  with  one's  own,  its  haste,  its  scurry 
for  money,  its  noisy  hustle.  One  fails  to  see 
the  flaws  in  other  tunes,  one  forgets  the  spurns 
that  merit  of  the  unworthy  took,  the  crumb 
that  the  poor  man  of  thought  picked  up  from 
the  carpet  of  the  man  of  place.  But  still, 
but  still  —  like  an  obstinate  old  lady,  that  is 
all  one  can  say;  one  feels  that  those  were 
better  days  for  genius,  because  then  respecta- 
bility was  unborn. 

It  may  be  that  already  my  readers  and  I  are 
at  war,  for  here  am  I,  glibly  talking  of  genius, 
without  precisely  knowing  what  it  is,  as  one 
may  talk  of  art,  or  love,  without  being  able  to 
define  these  things;  all  one  can  do  is  to  point 
out  genius  when  one  sees  it.  Carlyle  was 
much  laughed  at  for  saying  that  genius  was  an 
infinite  capacity  for  taking  pains.  That  does 
not  sound  like  genius;  one  imagines  genius 
as  ravelling  its  hair,  whatever  ravelling  may 
be,  and  producing  the  immortal  Word  to  the 
accompaniment  of  epileptic  fits ;  absinthe  also 
goes  with  genius  very  well.  But  in  reality, 
205 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


genius,  I  suspect,  is  a  tamer  affair,  and  arises 
easily  enough  in  men  like  Rembrandt,  who 
painted  pictures  because  he  liked  doing  it  and 
because  the  sitters  paid  him  for  their  portraits ; 
more  satisfactorily  to  Carlyle  it  arises  in  men 
like  Flaubert,  who  revealed  much  of  his  at- 
titude in  one  phrase  of  his  correspondence : 
"To-day  I  have  worked  sixteen  hours  and 
have  at  last  finished  my  page."  Therein  lies 
the  difference  between  Flaubert  and  de  Mau- 
passant; it  may  be,  too,  that  Boileau  was 
right  in  advising  the  poet  a  hundred  times  to 
replace  his  work  upon  the  bench,  endlessly 
polish  it,  and  polish  it  again,  but  many  in- 
stances of  almost  spontaneous  creation  con- 
front us;  it  is  enough  to  quote  that  in  six 
years,  between  1602  and  1608,  Shakespeare 
appears  to  have  written  eleven  plays,  among 
them  "Julius  Caesar",  "Hamlet",  "Othello", 
"Macbeth",  and  "King  Lear."  What  shall 
we  say  then  of  that  vague  thing,  genius,  which 
is  to  mankind  what  the  thing  we  call  soul  is 
to  man?  For  my  part,  I  believe  it  to  be  vol- 
canic rather  than  sedimentary.  It  is  as  if  the 
206 


THE  TWILIGHT  OF  GENIUS 

spirit  of  the  race  accumulated  in  a  creature, 
the  spirit  of  life  claiming  to  be  born.  Genius 
will  out,  but  it  is  most  frequent  in  certain 
periods  of  human  history,  such  as  the  Eliza- 
bethan or  Medician;  in  certain  places,  such 
as  France,  Italy,  and  the  Low  Countries; 
under  certain  influences,  such  as  oppression, 
war,  revolution,  or  social  decay.  That  is  an 
interesting  catalogue,  and  if  history  repeats 
itself,  the  future  for  genius,  as  evidenced 
particularly  in  art,  would  be  black,  for  there 
have  been  few  periods  where  comfort,  ease,  and 
security  bred  genius.  It  is  as  if  the  plant 
needed  something  to  push  against.  Every 
day  life  becomes  more  secure,  justice  more 
certain,  property  more  assured;  humanity 
grows  fat,  and  the  grease  of  its  comfort  col- 
lects round  its  heart.  It  is  difficult  to  imagine 
genius  flourishing  in  a  world  perfectly  admin- 
istered by  city  councils. 

It  was  not  in  worlds  such  as  ours  that  the 

geniuses  of  the  past  sped  their  flights,  but  in 

anxious,    tortured,    corrupt,    starving    worlds, 

worlds  of  heaping  ambition  and  often  tottering 

207 


fortune.  Napoleon,  perhaps  the  greatest  claim- 
ant of  them  all,  lived  in  one  of  those  periods  of 
reconstruction,  when  the  earth  bears  new  life, 
restores  what  the  earth  has  just  destroyed,  a 
period  very  like  this  war  (a  hopeful  sign,  though 
I  make  no  prophecies) ;  but  if  Napoleon  is  re- 
membered, it  is  not  only  as  a  conqueror,  for 
other  men  have  won  battles  and  the  dust  of 
their  fame  is  mingled  with  the  dust  of  their 
bones.  His  genius  does  not  lie  in  his  military 
skill,  in  his  capacity  to  pin  a  wing  while  piercing 
a  centre,  nor  in  his  original  idea  that  guns 
should  be  taken  from  battalions  and  massed 
into  artillery  brigades.  The  genius  of  Napo- 
leon lies  in  the  generality  of  his  mind,  in  his 
understanding  of  the  benefits  the  State  would 
derive  from  the  tobacco  monopoly,  in  his  con- 
ception of  war  as  the  victory  of  the  transport 
officer,  in  his  conception  of  peace  as  the  triumph 
of  law,  which  is  the  French  Civil  Code.  It 
manifested  itself  when  Napoleon,  in  the  middle 
of  flaming  Moscow,  in  a  conquered  country, 
surrounded  by  starving  troops  and  massing 
enemies,  could  calmly  peruse  the  law  establish- 

208 


THE  TWILIGHT  OF   GENIUS 


ing  the  French  state-endowed  theatres  and 
sign  it  upon  a  drumhead.  That  is  typical,  for 
genius  is  both  general  and  particular.  It  is 
the  quality  to  which  nothing  that  is  human  can 
be  alien,  whether  of  mankind  or  of  man.  Lin- 
coln was  a  man  such  as  that ;  his  passionate 
advocacy  of  the  negro,  his  triumph  at  Cooper 
Union,  his  Gettysburg  dedication,  his  admin- 
istrative capacity,  all  that  is  little  by  the  side 
of  his  one  sentiment  for  the  conquered  South ! 
"I  will  treat  them  as  if  they  had  never  been 
away." 

The  detail,  which  is  the  prison  house  of  the 
little  man,  is  the  exercising  ground  of  the  great 
one.  Such  men  as  Galileo  showed  what  brand 
it  was  they  would  set  upon  history's  face ;  the 
soul  of  Galileo  is  not  in  the  telescope,  or  in  the 
isochronism  of  the  pendulum  oscillation,  or 
even  in  the  discovery  (which  was  rather  an 
intuition)  of  the  movement  of  the  earth.  All 
of  Galileo  is  in  one  phrase,  when  poor,  im- 
prisoned, tortured  and  mocked,  heretic  and 
recusant,  he  was  able  to  murmur  to  those 
who  bade  him  recant:  "Still  she  moves." 
209 


LITERARY   CHAPTERS 


It  is  in  all  of  them,  this  general  and  this  par- 
ticular, in  Leonardo,  together  painter,  mathe- 
matician, architect,  and  excellent  engineer,  but 
above  all,  father  of  La  Gioconda.  It  is  in 
Beethoven,  not  so  much  in  the  "Pathetique" 
or  in  the  "Pastorale",  as  in  the  man  who, 
through  his  deafness,  could  still  hear  the  songs 
of  eternity.  Special  and  general  were  they 
all;  one  comes  to  think  that  genius  is  to- 
gether an  infinite  capacity  for  seeing  all  things, 
and  an  infinite  capacity  for  ignoring  all  things 
but  one. 

Life  goes  marching  on.  Who  shall  claim 
the  laurel  wreath  that  time  cannot  wither? 
So  many,  still  living  or  recently  dead,  have  pos- 
tured so  well  that  it  is  hard  to  say  what  will 
be  left  when  they  have  been  discounted  at  the 
Bank  of  Posterity.  Politicians,  writers,  men 
of  science,  highly  prized  by  their  fellows  — 
what  living  court  is  cool  enough  to  judge  them  ? 
Who  shall  say  whether  Rodin  will  remain 
upon  a  pedestal,  or  whether  he  will  fall  to  a 
rank  as  low  as  that  of  Lord  Leighton?  Like- 
wise, Doctor  Ehrlich  saw  the  furrow  he  ploughed 

210 


THE  TWILIGHT  OF  GENIUS 


crossed  by  other  furrows;  it  may  be  that  the 
turbulent,  inquisitive  mind  of  Mr.  Edison 
may  have  developed  only  fascinating  applica- 
tions, and  not  have,  as  we  think,  set  new 
frontiers  to  the  fields  of  scientific  thought. 
Those  are  men  difficult  to  fix,  as  are  also  men 
such  as  Lord  Kitchener  and  Henry  James, 
because  they  are  too  close  to  us  as  persons  to 
be  seen  entirely,  and  yet  too  far  for  us  to 
imagine  the  diagrams  of  their  personalities. 
We  are  closer  to  some  others,  to  people  such  as 
Mr.  Thomas  Hardy,  even  though  he  stopped 
in  full  flight  and  gathered  himself  together 
only  to  produce  the  "Dynasts"  in  a  medium 
which  is  not  quite  the  one  he  was  born  to. 
We  are  fairly  close,  too,  to  M.  Anatole  France, 
to  his  gaiety,  his  malignancy,  his  penetration 
without  pity.  M.  Anatole  France  is  one  of 
the  great  doubtfuls  of  our  period,  like  the 
Kaiser  and  Mr.  Roosevelt.  Like  both,  he 
has  something  of  the  colossal,  and  like  both  he 
suggests  that  there  were,  or  may  be,  taller 
giants.  For  as  one  reads  M.  Anatole  France, 
as  he  leads  one  by  the  hand  through  Ausonian 

211 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


glades,  the  shadow  of  Voltaire  haunts  one, 
wearing  a  smile  secure  and  vinegary.  Like- 
wise, when  we  consider  the  Kaiser,  where 
depth  has  been  transmuted  into  area,  where 
responsibility  to  his  own  pride  borders  upon 
mania,  appraisal  is  difficult.  The  Kaiser,  judg- 
ing him  from  his  speeches  and  his  deeds,  ap- 
pears to  have  carried  the  commonplace  to  a 
pitch  where  it  attains  distinction.  He  has 
become  as  general  as  an  encyclopaedia;  he  is 
able  to  embrace  in  a  single  brain  theocracy 
and  local  government,  official  art  and  zoology; 
he  has  carried  respect  for  the  family  to  the 
limit  of  patriarchal  barbarity  —  one  loses  all 
sense  of  proportion  and  ceases  to  know  whether 
he  is  colossal  or  monstrous.  In  many  ways 
one  discovers  brotherhood  in  people  like  Cecil 
Rhodes,  the  Kaiser,  and  Mr.  Roosevelt.  All 
three  are  warriors  in  a  modern  Ring,  and  all 
three  suggest  displacement  from  their  proper 
period,  for  I  imagine  the  Kaiser  better  as  a 
Frederick  Barbarossa,  Cecil  Rhodes  as  an 
all-powerful  Warren  Hastings,  and  Mr.  Roose- 
velt as  a  roaring  Elizabethan  sailor,  born  to 

212 


THE  TWILIGHT  OF  GENIUS 


discover  and  ravage  some  new  kind  of  Spanish 
Main. 

They  are  not  easily  passed  through  the  gage 
of  criticism,  these  people.  Their  angles  have 
not  worn  off,  so  that  many  doubtfuls,  such  as 
Carlyle,  Whitman,  de  Maupassant,  Beacons- 
field,  people  who  dumped  themselves  in  history 
and  stayed  there  because  one  did  not  know  how 
to  move  them,  put  their  names  down  as  can- 
didates to  the  immortal  roll.  Excepting  per- 
haps M.  Anatole  France,  it  is  difficult  to  tell 
where  they  will  pass  eternity.  If  we  cannot 
say  who  of  our  fathers  may  claim  the  laurel 
wreath,  how  can  we  choose  from  among  our- 
selves? We  judge  our  fathers  so  harshly 
that  it  is  a  comfort  to  think  we  may  be  as 
unjust  to  our  sons  —  but  what  of  ourselves  ? 
of  this  generation  which  feels  so  important 
that  it  hardly  conceives  a  world  without  itself  ? 
a  generation  like  other  generations  in  the  Age 
of  Bronze,  that  felt  so  advanced  because  the 
Age  of  Stone  had  gone  by?  Let  us  name 
nobody,  and  consider  rather  the  times  in  which 
we  sow  our  seeds. 

213 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


They  are  not  very  good  times,  these  modern 
ones.  Historically  speaking,  they  are  not  the 
sort  of  times  which  favour  genius;  though  it 
be  true  that  genius  is  volcanic,  there  are  con- 
ditions which  assist  its  birth,  which  give 
tongues  to  inglorious  Miltons.  It  is  so,  just 
as  certain  times  and  conditions  can  stifle  even 
genius,  and  the  paradox  is  that  both  are  the 
same.  Poverty  can  kill  genius,  and  it  can  make 
it;  oppression  may  clip  its  wings  or  grow  its 
feathers,  disease  may  sap  its  strength,  or  flog 
its  nerves.  Epictetus  was  a  slave.  But  the 
feature  of  our  period  is  its  devouring  hatred 
of  anything  worthy  of  being  called  art ;  thus 
have  come  about  two  decays,  that  of  the  artist 
and  that  of  art.  A  void  and  vulgarised  world 
has  deprived  us  of  an  aloof  audience,  for  the 
aristocrats  who  once  were  cultured  are  photo- 
graphed in  the  papers.  Haste,  crudity,  sen- 
sation, freedom  frorn  moral,  religious,  social 
ties  have  brought  about  a  neglect  of  fine  shades. 
Thus,  when  I  consider  the  conditions  created  in 
every  civilised  State  by  the  present  war,  where 
speech  is  repressed,  where  letters  are  read, 
214 


THE  TWILIGHT  OF  GENIUS 

rebels  banished,  where  the  songs  of  the  muses 
are  drowned  by  the  yapping  of  the  popular 
curs,  I  find  hope  in  humanity,  because  it  is  a 
sleepy  thing  and  often  asserts  its  greatness 
when  it  is  most  reviled.  To  take  a  minor 
instance  (and  let  us  not  exaggerate  its  value), 
I  doubt  if  post-impressionists,  futurists,  cubists, 
and  such  like  would  have  achieved  the  little 
they  have,  if  they  had  not  felt  outcast,  a  sort 
of  grey  company  marching  into  the  lonely 
dawn.  Oh  yes !  they  are  small  people,  absurd 
people,  many  of  them;  they  will  be  followed 
by  other  people  quite  as  small  and  as  petty, 
and  they  will  set  to  work  to  astonish  the 
bourgeois.  At  that  game,  one  of  them  may 
manage  to  stagger  humanity. 

I  suspect  that  three  main  qualities  affect 
the  occurrence  of  genius:  the  emotional  quality 
of  a  period,  its  intellectual,  and  its  romantic 
quality.  It  is  not  easy  to  discern  those  three 
qualities  in  the  modern  world,  because  of  the 
growing  uniformity  of  mankind.  The  indi- 
vidual is  greater  than  the  citizen,  and  yet  a 
deep-dyed  national  livery  brings  him  out. 
215 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


As  civilisation  spreads,  in  all  white  countries 
other  than  Russia  it  tends  to  produce  a  uniform 
type ;   at  any  rate,  it  produces  uniform  groups 
of  types.     For  instance,  if  we  measure  types 
by  their  anxiety  to  gain  money  or  status,  by 
the  houses  in  which  they  agree  to  live,  by  the 
clothes  they  wear,  the  foods  and  the  pleasures 
they  like,  we  find  little  differences  between  the 
industrial  districts  of  Lombardy  and  Sheffield, 
the  coal  mines  and  factories  of  Lille,  or  those 
of    Pennsylvania.    Likewise,    if    we    compare 
elegance,  hurry,  display,  intellectual  keenness, 
a  man  will  find  all  he  wants,  whether  he  live 
in  Paris,  in  Vienna,  in  New  York,  or  in  London. 
(I  have  eaten  dinner  at  the  Metropole,  London, 
the  Metropole,  Paris,  the  Metropole,  Brussels, 
and  the  Continental,  San  Sebastian;    and  it 
was  the  same  dinner  everywhere,  more  or  less : 
Supreme  de  Volaille,  Riz  a  PImperatrice,  etc.) 
Even  the  farmers,   those  laggards,  have  lost 
so  many  of  their  ancient  ways  that  from  Sus- 
sex to  Kentucky  identities  have  sprung  up. 
The  races,   now   that  railways  and  steamers 
have   come,   mingle   freely,    exchange   dishes, 

216 


THE  TWILIGHT  OF  GENIUS 


plays,  and  entangle  themselves  matrimonially 
in  foreign  lands.  It  was  less  so  in  1850,  and 
it  was  hardly  so  in  1800.  Following  on  travel, 
and  on  the  growth  of  foreign  trade,  the  study 
of  foreign  languages  has  sprung  up,  so  that 
most  of  us  are  fit  to  become  ambassadors  or 
waiters.  Education,  too,  which  in  its  golden 
age  taught  no  man  anything  that  would  be 
of  the  slightest  practical  use  to  him,  that 
contented  itself  with  making  him  into  a  man 
of  culture,  has  in  all  white  countries  set  itself 
the  task  of  fitting  men,  by  the  means  of  lan- 
guages, cheap  science,  geography,  and  book- 
keeping, to  force  life  to  pay  dividends.  Only 
life  pays  no  dividends ;  it  merely  increases  its 
capital. 

This  similarity  of  life,  induced  by  the  modern 
applications  of  science,  the  railway,  the  tele- 
graph, the  telephone,  double-entry,  the  steamer, 
the  film,  has  denationalised  man,  and  however 
many  wars  he  may  wage  in  the  cause  of  national 
nationality,  he  will  continue  to  grow  dena- 
tionalised, because  the  contact  of  neighbours, 
which  he  cannot  avoid,  teaches  him  to  desire 
217 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


what  they  enjoy ;  he  can  attain  his  desire  only 
by  becoming  more  like  them.  I  doubt  if  this 
is  the  best  atmosphere  for  the  rise  of  genius. 

Retirement  within  self,  followed  by  violent 
emergence,  one  of  the  conditions  of  genius,  is 
more  easily  attained  in  an  enclosed  community 
of  the  type  of  ancient  Florence  than  in  a  sort 
of  international  congress  like  Chicago.  The 
sensation  of  being  a  chosen  people,  felt  by  all 
strong  nationalities,  such  as  the  Elizabethan 
English,  the  "Mayflower"  settlers,  the  Jews, 
the  Castillians,  provides  the  stimulus  to  pride, 
which  spurs  into  the  gallop  of  genius  a  talent 
which  might  trot.  Thus  the  Chinese  potters, 
and  the  Japanese  painters  of  the  past  pro- 
duced their  unequalled  work  —  while  of  late 
years  they  have  taken  to  European  ways, 
and  have  come  to  paint  so  ill  that  they  are 
admired  in  respectable  drawing-rooms.  Moli- 
ere  was  a  Frenchman ;  his  humour  is  not  that 
of  Falstaff ,  nor  of  Aristophanes,  nor  of  Gogol. 
He  was  a  Frenchman  first,  and  a  genius  after. 
Likewise,  Cervantes  was  a  Spaniard,  and 
Turgenev  a  Russian.  None  of  them  could  be 

218 


THE  TWILIGHT  OF  GENIUS 


anything  else.  But  they  did  not  carry  their 
nation :  they  rode  it ;  though  genius  express 
the  world,  its  consciousness  of  its  own  people 
expresses  that  people.  The  nationality  of  a 
man  of  genius  is  a  sort  of  tuning  fork  which 
tells  him  all  the  time  whether  his  word  or  his 
deed  is  ringing  true  to  his  own  being.  It  is 
not  wonderful  that  in  such  conditions  the  emo- 
tional quality  of  our  time  should  be  hard  to 
discern,  for  it  is  not  easy  to  survey  a  boiling 
world.  That  quality  can  be  expressed  only 
through  four  media:  art,  patriotism,  religion, 
and  love.  There  is  but  one  sculptor,  Jacob 
Epstein,  who  detaches  himself  and  makes  a 
bid  for  a  pedestal ;  Mestrovic,  his  Serbian  rival, 
tends  to  the  colossal  rather  than  to  the  great. 
In  painting,  the  chaos  is  perhaps  pregnant, 
but  it  is  still  chaos;  not  one  of  our  young 
cubists  or  futurists  can  pretend  to  be  anything 
more  than  a  curiosity  or  a  finger-post.  In 
literature,  Italy,  Germany,  and  Austria  are 
desert,  while  France,  represented  by  men 
such  as  Paul  Fort,  the  late  Marcel  Proust,  the 
much  boomed  Mr.  Barbusse  and  Mr.  Claudel, 

219 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


seems  to  have  reached  the  nadir  of  decay.  If 
the  writers  of  the  day  were  not  mortal  and  the 
future  leisurely,  the  Germans  (though  they  have 
nothing  to  boast  of)  might  well  argue  that 
France  should  take  her  farewell  benefit.  Eng- 
land is  happier,  even  though  nearly  all  her 
young  novelists  are  afflicted  with  a  monstrous 
interest  in  themselves  and  an  equally  monstrous 
lack  of  sympathy  with  everybody  else.  They 
are  in  reaction  against  surrounding  life,  builders 
and  destroyers  as  well  as  showmen.  Their 
seniors,  who  once  bid  so  high,  such  as  Mr. 
Bennett  and  Mr.  Wells,  have  taken  the  fatal 
plunge  which  leads  to  popularity,  but  the 
younger  ones  have  produced  one  man,  Mr. 
D.  H.  Lawrence.  Prejudiced,  diseased  in  out- 
look, hectic  and  wandering,  he  has  the  exquisite 
feeling  for  natural  beauty,  the  rhapsodic  qual- 
ity which  may  make  of  him  a  prose  Shelley,  if 
not  a  prose  neurotic.  America  does  not  come 
in  yet ;  she  is  too  old  to  bring  forth  the  genius 
of  the  pioneer,  too  young  to  bring  forth  the 
genius  of  maturity.  The  time  of  the  Haw- 
thornes  has  gone,  and  the  time  of  the  Dreisers 

220 


THE  TWILIGHT  OF  GENIUS 

is  not  yet.  Attack  me  not  too  much  if  I  sug- 
gest that  in  men  such  as  Mr.  Theodore  Dreiser 
and  Mr.  Owen  Johnson,  men  who  write  badly 
and  vulgarly,  whose  works  are  either  senti- 
mental or  brutish,  America  must  look  to  her 
claimants  for  literary  fame.  Those  men  are 
alive;  they  will  fail  like  Jack  London,  but 
they  are  the  indicators  of  your  trend,  and 
represent  the  violent  quality  of  your  fresh- 
painted  civilisation.  Other  men,  in  other 
times,  will  sing  their  songs ;  to  a  country  like 
America,  what  is  five  hundred  years? 

The  emotional  quality  of  our  time  is  no 
better  expressed  in  patriotism,  however  preva- 
lent this  emotion  may  be  just  now.  The 
patriotism  which  to-day  reigns  in  the  world 
is  rather  a  negative  thing;  it  consists  much 
more  in  hating  enemies  than  in  loving  friends. 
It  is  a  smoky,  dusty,  bloody,  angry  affair.  It 
calls  up  every  heroism  and  every  ugliness. 
There  is  so  much  drama  in  the  world  that  our 
sentiments  grow  dramatic,  and  we  come  to 
depend  for  our  patriotic  feelings  upon  the  daily 
stimulus  of  newspapers,  uniforms,  and  bands, 
221 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


All  that  is  ephemeral  because  it  lacks  exalta- 
tion. The  Germans  enjoy  a  rather  more  ro- 
mantic patriotism,  because  they  are  the  most 
aggressive  and  the  most  guilty  of  what  is 
happening  —  and  it  is  an  irony  that  in  this 
guilt  should  be  found  the  ancient  strength 
that  made  the  unjust  man  flourish  as  the  green 
bay  tree.  But  their  patriotism  is,  perhaps, 
the  most  shoddy,  the  most  artificial  of  all : 
rhapsodies  about  the  ancient  German  gods 
are  ridiculous  when  we  think  that  Germany 
is  mainly  a  country  of  aniline  factories ;  when 
they  call  a  trench  line  the  Siegfried  Line  (why 
not  the  Schopenhauer  redoubt?)  they  are 
ridiculous.  Patriotism  is  not  found  in  such 
theatrical  eccentricities,  any  more  than  it  is 
found  in  the  constant  courage  of  those  who 
defend.  Patriotism  is  in  the  brain,  not  in  the 
body ;  it  is  love  rather  than  hatred,  a  builder, 
not  a  destroyer.  It  opens  its  eyes  towards  fair 
horizons  and  plans  cities  in  the  clouds.  It  is 
an  eternally  young  man  who  dreams  dreams. 
Patriotism  sailed  with  Columbus  into  your 
seas,  held  the  hand  of  Necker  and  Witte, 
222 


THE  TWILIGHT  OF  GENIUS 


striving  to  reform  their  countries ;  it  was  in 
Grant  rather  than  the  gallant  Robert  Lee. 
Patriotism  so  conceived  does  not  haunt  the 
streets,  for  it  is  a  drab  affair  to  give  all  one's 
energy  to  make  the  justice  of  one's  country 
clean,  to  provide  for  its  aged  and  its  sick,  to 
help  it  to  grow  learned  or  liberal.  In  peace 
times  there  are  no  patriots;  there  are  only 
partisans. 

We  are  told  that  emotion  repressed  finds  its 
outlet  in  religion,  but  that  is  not  true,  for 
religion  is  now  a  decaying  force,  and  every  day 
rebellion  against  dogma  grows.  Let  it  be  clear 
that  ethics  are  not  decaying,  but  these  have 
nothing  whatever  to  do  with  religion.  In  the 
true  conception  of  religion  many  a  rogue  has 
gone  to  heaven,  because  by  faith  he  gave  it 
existence,  while  many  a  well-living  church- 
warden haunts  another  region,  possibly  because 
it  was  the  only  one  he  could  conceive.  The 
modern  world  does  not  meditate  on  religion. 
It  is  interested  in  right  and  wrong,  but  it 
desires  no  extra-human  solution  of  the  prob- 
lem of  life,  unless  it  can  find  it  in  the  test  tube 
223 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


of  a  laboratory.  It  frankly  does  not  care,  and 
so  the  afflatus  which  swelled  such  triumphant 
men  as  St.  Augustine,  Ignatius  of  Loyola,  Tor- 
quemada,  Mahomet,  seeks  sails  to  fill,  but 
finds  only  steamboats.  Religion,  in  its  true 
meaning,  an  aspiration  towards  the  divine, 
still  exists  among  the  Brahmins,  but  in  a  state 
of  such  quietism  that  it  is  sterile ;  it  is  lost  to 
the  whites.  Differences  of  faith  engender 
rivalry  only,  not  hate,  which  is  the  next  best 
thing  to  love.  The  doom  of  the  faiths  was 
written  when  their  supporters  lost  the  impulse 
to  burn  heretics. 

Love  is  more  fortunate,  except  that  to-day 
too  few  bonds  tie  its  wings,  for  ifc  is  the  ever- 
lastingly real  thing  in  the  world.  Mankind 
was  charmed  with  its  prowess  in  the  age  of 
stone,  because  it  was  the  lyra  upon  which  mor- 
tal man  always  thought  to  sing  an  immortal 
song.  Love  still  sings  its  immortal  songs,  while 
the  elevated  railway  goes  clanking  by ;  it  sings 
in  daisy-spangled  meadows  and  by  the  side 
of  gasometers;  its  voice  can  dominate  a  "nig- 
ger" band,  and  there  is  no  life  it  cannot  embalm 

224 


THE  TWILIGHT  OF   GENIUS 


with  the  ashes  of  incense.  But  even  so,  many 
things  soil  it,  the  need  for  money  in  a  civili- 
sation where  the  gamble  of  life  turns  into  an 
investment;  there  is  social  position,  too,  of 
which  Henry  VIII  thought  very  little,  which 
means  mainly  that  one  always  looks  down  upon 
somebody,  always  looks  up  to  somebody,  and 
seldom  at  anybody.  But  even  so  the  satis- 
faction of  love  is  too  easy ;  if  a  man  wishes  to 
marry  his  cook,  he  has  only  to  get  rich  and  to 
give  good  dinners.  (He  would  —  obviously.) 
He  can  be  divorced  and  forgiven.  No  brutal 
duke  can  exile  him  or  look  up  his  beloved  in 
a  convent.  There  are  no  Montagues  and 
Capulets  to  play  gunman  on  Broadway.  A 
few  dollars  and  some  audacity  will  buy  the 
right  to  defy  anything;  barriers  are  coming 
down ;  classes  are  rising,  others  falling.  Then, 
in  your  country,  there  will  be  no  prejudices  to 
violate,  and  Love,  the  eternal  rebel,  will  have 
lost  a  gate  to  scale. 


225 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


2 

Many  factors  go  towards  lowering  the  tone 
of  this  mankind  whence  genius  should  spring 
as  a  madman  or  a  god.  One  is  our  intense  con- 
sciousness of  money.  The  discovery  of  money 
is  recent,  for  the  rich  men  of  the  Bible  wanted 
flocks  and  lands  only  so  that  they  might  eat 
well,  drink  well,  and  wed  fair  women  :  the  lust 
of  Ahab  was  rather  unusual.  At  other  times, 
in  Babylon,  in  Venice,  wealth  brought  mate- 
rial benefits  first,  later  only  distinction.  Only 
with  the  rise  of  the  middle  class  did  wealth 
become  the  greatest  force,  for  it  alone  could 
make  the  middle  class  equal  with  their  fellows. 
As  they  could  claim  no  lineage,  they  naturally 
came  to  want  to  claim  themselves  better  than 
their  kind ;  the  merchant  princes  of  the  Vic- 
torian period,  their  sideboards,  barouches,  and 
sarcophagi ;  the  American  millionaires  with 
their  demon  cars,  their  Ritz-Carlton  dinners, 
their  investments  in  old  masters  (guaranteed 
mouldy),  are  natural  consequences.  Whereas 
in  the  seventeenth  century  you  could  impress 

226 


THE  TWILIGHT  OF   GENIUS 

if  you  were  a  duke,  in  the  twentieth  century 
if  you  become  a  millionaire  you  can  stun. 
And  you  can  stun  only  because  everybody 
admires  you  for  being  a  millionaire,  because, 
as  Miss  Marion  Ashworth  perfectly  says, 
"there  are  people  whom  the  mention  of  great 
fortunes  always  makes  solemn." 

Even  potential  genius  has  been  touched  by 
this.  Ruskin,  Thackeray,  Diaz,  Kruger,  all 
these  loved  money  well,  and  all  approached  the 
state  denned  by  Oscar  Wilde:  "to  know  the 
price  of  everything  and  the  value  of  noth- 
ing." Love  of  money  makes  genius  a  laggard, 
for  genius  does  not  pay  except  in  a  run  too  long 
for  most  men's  breath.  "Too  long!"  That 
is  perhaps  the  cry  of  a  century  disinclined  to 
take  infinite  pains. 

With  the  demand  for  money  goes  the  de- 
mand for  fame.  I  doubt  whether  a  genius 
still  unrevealed  will  accept  the  idea  that  he 
may  not  achieve  swift  success.  The  fatal 
result  is  that  potential  genius  is  tempted  to 
take  the  necessary  steps  to  "get-famous- 
quick";  that  is  to  say,  it  must  condescend. 
227 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


Instead  of  being  one  so  high  that  none  can  un- 
derstand him,  the  genius  must  become  one 
just  high  enough  to  be  admired.  Then  he  is 
popular  —  and  defeated,  for  as  some  French- 
man rightly  said,  he  has  earned  the  wages  of 
popularity,  which  are  the  same  as  those  of 
glory  —  but  paid  out  in  coppers. 

It  is  not  altogether  our  fault,  all  this.  The 
conditions  in  which  we  live  do  not  favour  the 
breeding  of  titans.  Mr.  Dreiser's  "titan", 
Cowperwood,  his  "genius",  Witla,  are  fairly 
good  instances  of  the  modern  view  of  genius. 
They  are  blatant,  stupid,  acquisitive,  full  of 
the  vulgar  strength  which  would  have  made 
of  them  successful  saloon  keepers.  They  can- 
not help  it ;  they  dwell  in  a  world  like  an  in- 
ternational exhibition,  between  a  machine  that 
can  turn  out  seventeen  thousand  sausages  an 
hour  and  the  most  expensive  Velasquez  on 
record ;  they  thrive  on  the  sweet  draught  on 
the  soda  fountain  rather  than  on  the  honey  of 
Hymettus,  while  the  sun  sees  his  horses  un- 
harnessed from  his  chariot  and  set  to  grind- 
ing out  units  of  caloric  power  by  the  some- 

228 


THE  TWILIGHT  OF   GENIUS 

thing  or  other  company.  This  does  not  suit 
genius.  Genius  needs  solitude,  true  solitude, 
not  only  a  place  where  you  cannot  buy  news- 
papers, but  a  place  where  there  are  none  in 
the  consciousness.  Genius  needs  to  retreat 
upon  itself,  to  fecundate  itself  until  from  the 
nightmare  of  one  life  is  born  the  dream  of 
another.  Genius  cannot  find  this  solitude, 
because  the  round  globe  hums  as  it  spins,  be- 
cause it  is  alive  with  haste,  with  deeds  crowd- 
ing into  the  fleet  hour  that  is  no  slower  nor 
more  rapid  however  crowded  it  may  be,  but 
only  more  hectic.  We  have  come  to  a  point 
where  noise  is  natural,  where  we  cannot  sleep 
unless  trains  roar  past  our  windows  and  news- 
boys cry  murders  to  the  unmoved  night. 

Literature  has  felt  this  of  late  years,  and 
has  retired  into  the  country  to  find  silence,  but 
it  is  so  nervous  that  silence  stuns  it.  That 
will  not  last ;  many  men  of  genius,  Rembrandt, 
Whitman,  Bach,  Racine,  felt  this  need  to  with- 
draw, even  though  most  of  them,  in  the  coun- 
try or  in  tiny  towns,  could  well  afford  to  mix 
with  their  fellows,  because  there  were  not 
229 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


enough  of  them  to  make  a  mob.  They  had 
their  opportunity  and  could  take  it,  and  so 
they  produced  art  which  some  thought  to  be 
an  unhealthy  secretion  of  the  intellect.  Their 
followers  will  not  be  so  fortunate,  and  I  have  a 
growing  vision  of  the  world  in  the  year  2500, 
when  there  may  be  but  one  State,  one  lan- 
guage, one  race,  when  railroads  will  have  pushed 
their  heads  over  the  Rockies,  at  regular  five- 
mile  intervals  —  when  there  will  be  city  coun- 
cils on  the  shores  of  Lake  Tanganyika, 
and  Patagonia  will  stand  first  for  technology. 
First  ?  Perhaps  not  —  it  may  be  worse.  I 
feel  there  may  be  no  first,  but  a  uniform  level 
of  mediocre  excellence  from  which  there  will 
be  no  escape. 

The  intellectual  prospects  are  better  than 
the  artistic,  for  the  spirit  of  education  over- 
hangs the  planet.  It  is  true  that  education 
does  not  breed  genius,  but  it  breeds  a  type  of 
man  in  whom  arise  intellectual  manifesta- 
tions akin  to  genius.  Modern  science  has 
probably  a  large  number  of  first  principles  to 
discover,  and  may  have  to  destroy  a  good 
230 


THE  TWILIGHT  OF  GENIUS 

many  principles  now  established ;  it  will  not 
need  education  for  this,  but  it  will  need  edu- 
cation to  apply  the  new  principles.  A  large 
mind  can  apprehend  without  special  education, 
and  it  may  be  true  that  Isaac  Newton  traced 
the  law  of  gravitation  from  the  fall  of  an  apple, 
that  Mr.  Edison  was  led  to  the  phonograph 
by  a  pricked  finger,  but  it  is  much  more  true 
that  the  research  man  does  not  fluke  upon  the 
serum  that  will  neutralise  a  disease  germ; 
he  will  discover  it  by  endless  experiment  and 
contrivance. 

No  uneducated  man  can  discover  a  serum, 
or  hope  to  design  a  multiphase  dynamo.  To  do 
this  astonishing  work  man  needs  a  substratum 
of  general  and  technical  knowledge.  This  is 
being  given  him  all  over  the  world,  where  the 
classics  are  slowly  vacating  the  schools  and 
more  quickly  the  universities,  where  elementary 
education  is  improving,  where  laboratory  work 
is  beginning  to  mean  more  than  bangs  and 
smells,  where  science  applied  to  dyes,  to  foods, 
to  metals,  has  established  itself  in  a  genera- 
tion as  a  sort  of  elder  sister  to  the  pure  science 
231 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


which  came  to  us  from  alchemy.  This  goes 
further  than  science,  which  includes  mathe- 
matics; not  only  are  there  thousands  of 
schools  for  engineers,  but  the  universities  are 
developing  on  morphology,  psychology,  ap- 
plied philosophy,  history,  law,  constitutional 
practice,  etc.  This  is  happening  all  over  the 
world  and  creating  a  sounder  intellectual  mind. 
That  mind  is  far  too  specialised,  but  still  it  is 
a  trained  mind,  a  little  more  able  than  the  old 
passionate  mind  to  accept  conclusions  which 
do  not  square  with  its  prejudices. 

In  France  and  Germany  education  is  mainly 
utilitarian,  which  I  think  unfortunate,  except 
from  the  point  of  view  of  intellectual  production ; 
in  England,  the  desire  for  "useful"  education 
has  not  yet  gone  very  far  in  the  public  schools, 
which  still  bring  forth  the  admirable  type  of 
idiotic  gentleman,  but  already  in  the  old 
universities  of  Oxford  and  Cambridge  there  is 
a  strong  movement  against  compulsory  Greek, 
which  will  develop  against  compulsory  Latin. 
As  the  new  universities  in  the  manufacturing 
towns,  Glasgow,  Manchester,  London,  Leeds, 

232 


THE  TWILIGHT  OF  GENIUS 


Birmingham,  grow  up,  the  movement  will 
be  precipitated  at  Oxford  and  Cambridge,  for 
they  have  always  been  kicked  into  leader- 
ship, and  no  doubt  will  be  kicked  again.  In 
America,  the  movement  is  perhaps  more  pro- 
nounced, but  more  peculiar,  because  you  ap- 
pear to  desire  equally  riches  and  culture. 
Certainly,  Yale  and  Harvard  no  longer  hold 
over  your  other  centres  the  hegemony  which 
Oxford  and  Cambridge  contrive  to  hold  here. 
For  you  have  not  yet  had  time  to  make  castes ; 
you  have  been  too  busy  making  a  great  coun- 
try. 

I  do  not  say  that  all  this  is  agreeable.  It  is 
not,  for  education,  once  too  deeply  rooted  in 
the  useless,  is  throwing  out  equally  dangerous 
roots  into  the  useful.  (As  if  we  knew  what  is 
useful  and  what  is  useless  in  a  life  that  must 
end  in  a  passage  through  the  needle's  eye !) 
I  do  not  like  to  think  that  a  scholar  should  ask 
himself  whether  a  subject  will  pay ;  it  is  dis- 
tasteful that  he  should  learn  Russian  to  trade 
in  Russia,  and  not  to  read  Dostoievsky.  There 
will  be  a  reaction,  for  all  fevers  fall.  A  period 
233 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


must  come  when  a  new  Virchow  leads  a  cru- 
sade for  the  humanities,  for  philosophy,  for 
the  arts,  and  will  make  fashionable  "culture 
for  culture's  sake."  But  before  then  the 
world  must  sink  deeper  into  materialist  edu- 
cation. That  education  will  profit  the  world 
materially,  because  it  makes  the  soil  in  which 
invention  grows.  It  appears  to  be  a  good  thing 
that  ten  ears  of  corn  should  be  made  to  grow 
where  once  there  grew  but  one,  and  so  I  sup- 
pose we  must  assume  that  it  is  a  good  thing  if 
a  machine  can  be  induced  to  produce  a  mil- 
lion tin  tacks  in  ten  minutes  instead  of  half 
an  hour,  although  I  do  not  quite  know  why 
we  should  assume  it.  It  is  true  that  the  boys 
and  girls  whom  we  draw  from  the  peasantry, 
the  artisans,  whom  we  fill  with  dreams  of  be- 
coming young  gentlemen  in  black  coats  and 
perfect  ladies,  are  likely  to  produce  a  more 
nervous  and  intellectually  acquisitive  race, 
that  they  are  more  observant,  more  anxious 
to  apprehend  intellectually  than  were  their 
forefathers,  who  only  wanted  to  live.  That 
class  is  to-day  producing  the  industrial  chem- 

234 


THE  TWILIGHT  OF  GENIUS 


1st,  the  technical  agriculturist,  the  electrician, 
the  stone  and  timber  expert,  etc.  The  doctor, 
the  solicitor,  even  the  clergyman,  are  intel- 
lectually better  trained  than  they  were,  more 
inclined  to  keep  up-to-date  by  means  of  the 
journals  of  their  societies  and  of  the  latest 
books.  I  think  that  class  is  likely  to  give  us 
a  sufficient  group  of  Edisons,  Pasteurs,  Fara- 
days,  Roentgens.  The  coming  centuries  will 
inevitably  see  scientific  developments  which 
we  only  guess  at :  synthetic  foods,  synthetic 
fuels,  metals  drawn  from  the  sea,  the  restora- 
tion of  tissues,  the  prolongation  of  life,  the  ap- 
plications of  radio-active  energy;  we  may  as- 
sist at  developments  such  as  systematic  thought 
transference,  enlarge  valuable  organs  such  as 
the  lungs  and  procure  the  atrophy  of  useless 
ones  such  as  the  appendix.  We  have  prac- 
tically created  protoplasm  and  may  soon 
reach  the  amoeba  —  stumble  perhaps  a  little 
further  towards  the  triumph  that  would  make 
man  divine:  the  creation  of  life.  We  have 
everything  to  help  us.  Early  genius  was  handi- 
capped by  having  very  little  to  build  on,  by 
235 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


finding  it  almost  impossible  to  learn  anything, 
because  up  to  the  eighteenth  century  anything 
and  anybody  intellectually  valuable  was  burnt ; 
early  genius  could  depend  only  upon  itself; 
it  could  not  correlate  its  discoveries  with  those 
of  others;  nobody  could  assist  it  towards 
proof;  genius  always  had  to  begin  again  at 
the  beginning,  and  as  a  result  made  only  oc- 
casional discoveries,  so  that  the  ignorance  of 
the  world  was  like  an  uncharted  sea,  dotted 
here  and  there  with  a  ship  of  knowledge  unable 
to  signal  to  another.  That  is  over.  No  hy- 
pothesis is  too  daring,  no  claim  is  too  great ; 
every  specialist  is  inflamed  with  an  insatiable 
appetite  for  more  knowledge,  and  on  the  whole 
he  is  willing  to  publish  his  own.  This  means 
that  thousands,  some  of  them  men  of  talent, 
are  co-operating  on  a  single  point,  and  it  is 
quite  possible  that  they  will  achieve  more 
than  the  solitary  outcast  whom  his  fellows 
could  not  understand. 

Such  a  future  is  not  open  to  the  arts,  for 
they  endeavour  to-day  to  appeal  not  to  small 
classes  but  to  "the  public";   this  means  that 
236 


THE  TWILIGHT  OF  GENIUS 

they  must  startle  or  remain  unknown.  The 
outcast  was  not  always  so  tempted;  some- 
times he  sold  himself  to  a  patron,  but  there 
were  not  many  of  them,  and  so  the  artist  worked 
for  himself,  hoping  at  best  that  a  limited  cul- 
tured class  would  recognize  him :  to-day  he 
must  sing  to  a  deaf  public,  and  so  is  tempted 
to  bray.  It  is  therefore  in  science  and  states- 
manship that  the  romantic  quality  of  the  future 
will  be  found.  Romance  is  a  maligned  word, 
debased  to  fit  any  calflove;  romance  is  pink- 
ish, or  bluish,  tender,  feeble,  and  ends  in 
orange  blossom,  or,  as  the  case  may  be,  tears 
by  the  side  of  mother's  grave.  That  is  the 
romance  of  the  provincial  touring  company. 
True  romance  is  virile,  generous,  and  its  voice 
is  as  that  of  the  trumpet.  Romance  is  the 
wage  of  the  watcher  who  with  ever  open 
eyes  scans  the  boundless  air  in  eternal  expec- 
tation that  a  thing  unknown  will  appear. 
Romance  is  the  quest  of  the  unknown  thing; 
it  is  Don  Quixote  riding  Rozinante,  Vasco  da 
Gama  for  the  first  time  passing  the  Cape; 
romance  is  every  little  boy  who  dug  in  the 
237 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


back  garden  in  the  hope  of  Caching  the  an- 
tipodes. For  the  romantic  goal  is  always  on 
the  other  side  of  the  hill;  everlastingly  we 
seek  it  in  love,  for  the  spirit  of  the  loved  thing 
is  on  the  other  side  of  the  hill,  because,  more 
exactly,  what  we  seek  is  on  the  other  side  of 
ourselves. 

In  our  modern  world  it  is  possible  to  lead  the 
romantic  life,  even  though  the  equator  and 
the  poles  be  accessible  to  the  touring  agencies, 
even  though  most  loves  be  contracts,  for  we 
live  in  times  of  disturbance,  where  war,  in- 
ternational and  civil,  holds  its  sway,  where 
democracies  stir,  where  men  are  exalted  and 
abased.  All  times,  no  doubt,  were  stirring, 
and  after  the  fall  of  the  Roman  Empire,  they 
followed  almost  everywhere  the  same  course. 
After  the  invasion  of  the  barbarians,  romance 
fell  into  the  hands  of  the  rough  knights,  who 
established  order  by  the  sword;  it  passed 
to  the  more  spiritual  knights,  who  went  forth 
on  the  Crusade ;  then  the  kings  dominated  the 
knights,  creating  States,  while  the  citizens  raised 
their  banners  and  exacted  equality  with  kings ; 

238 


THE  TWILIGHT  OF  GENIUS 

the  age  of  exploration  came,  the  triumph  of 
the  merchant  in  India,  Virginia,  Hudson's 
Bay ;  wealth  arose,  an  ambitious  foe  of  royal 
and  aristocratic  power.  Then  came  the  revo- 
lutions, the  American,  the  French,  the  Euro- 
pean struggle  of  1848,  the  grand  battle  against 
slavery,  culminating  in  your  country.  That 
was  romance,  all  that  excitement,  ambition, 
achievement,  carrying  its  men  high.  If  citizen 
slays  aristocrat,  if  rich  man  slays  labour, 
now  labour  may  slay  rich  man.  Divisions  of 
blood  have  fallen  and  every  day  fall  lower, 
as  the  Portuguese,  the  Chinese,  the  Russians 
set  up  republican  states  where  no  blood  is 
blue.  That  is  not  the  end,  for  the  modern 
division  is  economic,  and  the  romance  of  man- 
kind will  be  the  establishment  of  states  where 
strife  will  kill  strife,  where  tolerance  if  not 
justice  can  reign,  where  discontent  will  give 
way  to  a  content  not  ignoble. 

In  the  nineteenth  and  twentieth  centuries 

many  romantic  lives  have  been  led;   startling 

persons  have  risen  like  meteors,   and  a  few 

still  burn  like  suns.    Men  like  Cecil  Rhodes, 

239 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


like  Mr.  Lloyd  George,  like  President  Car- 
ranza,  Mr.  Hearst,  Mr.  Leiter,  Mr.  Rocke- 
feller, Prince  Kropotkin,  have  lived  startling 
lives  of  contest  and  desire.  In  these  move- 
ments still  obscure,  where  labour  will  array 
itself  against  wealth,  where  hideous,  tyrannic 
things  will  be  done  in  the  name  of  liberty, 
where  hatred  will  smooth  the  path  to  love,  I 
think  there  will  be  extraordinary  careers  be- 
cause nothing  is  impossible  to  men,  and  a  few 
things  may  become  possible  to  women.  Many 
say  too  lightly  that  opportunity  is  not  as  great 
as  under  Elizabeth;  they  forget  that  if  the 
arts  are  sick,  other  careers  are  open ;  while 
no  man  could  expect  coronation  by  Elizabeth, 
he  can  now  aim  at  the  high  crown  of  the  love 
or  hatred  of  Demos.  Republics,  too,  can  have 
their  Rasputins. 

The  future  of  genius  lies  with  science  and 
the  State,  because  the  State  has  effected  a 
corner  in  power  and  romance.  For  art  and 
letters  there  is  little  hope  in  a  growingly  me- 
chanical civilisation,  because  the  modern  power- 
ful depend  upon  the  mob  and  not  upon  each 

240 


THE  TWILIGHT  OF  GENIUS 


other ;  therefore,  as  Napoleon  said,  they  must 
be  a  little  like  the  mob  —  be  the  super-mob. 
In  their  view,  as  in  the  view  of  those  who  fol- 
low them,  art  cannot  rival  money  and  domi- 
nation. The  mob  hates  the  arts  whenever  they 
rise  high,  for  the  arts  can  be  felt,  but  not 
understood;  at  other  times  it  scorns  them. 
Therefore,  the  arts  must  suffer  from  the  at- 
mosphere of  indifference  they  must  breathe. 
They  will  not  vanish,  for  mankind  needs  always 
to  express  itself,  its  aspiration,  its  content,  its 
discontent;  those  three  can  be  expressed  only 
in  the  arts.  But  this  does  not  mean  that  the 
arts  can  aspire  to  thrones  or  be  worthy  of 
them;  as  science  and  the  State  dwarf  them, 
they  must  become  little  stimulants,  sing  little 
songs  that  will  less  and  less  be  heard  amid  the 
roar  of  the  spinning  world. 


241 


By  the  author  of  "  The  Second  Blooming* 


THE  STRANGERS'  WEDDING 


By  W.  L.  GEORGE 
12mo.    Cloth.    450  pages.    $1.60  net. 


Readers  of  "The  Second  Blooming,"  one  of  the  most  dis- 
cussed novels  of  1915,  will  welcome  the  announcement  of 
another  novel  of  married  life  by  this  talented  English  author. 

"The  Strangers'  Wedding"  is  the  story  of  Roger  Huncote, 
a  young  man  of  the  upper  classes  who,  inflamed  with  philan- 
thropic ideals,  joins  a  settlement  to  work  among  the  poor.  He  is 
speedily  undeceived  as  to  the  usefulness  of  the  movement  and 
the  worthiness  of  those  who  control  it,  and  conceiving  an  un- 
reasonable disgust  of  his  own  class,  marries  the  daughter  of  a 
washerwoman.  Realizing  that  there  may  be  little  difficulties, 
he  believes  that  when  two  people  care  deeply  for  each  other 
nothing  else  can  matter.  But  Huncote  has  much  to  learn  ; 
and  most  of  the  story  is  concerned  with  the  pitiful  mis- 
understandings between  the  young  husband  and  the  young 
wife,  both  of  whom  are  charming  but  as  unable  to  meet  as  east 
and  west.  Mr.  George  indicates  with  much  psychological 
subtlety  the  reversion  of  the  "strangers"  to  their  own  class, 
which  ultimately  leads  them  to  a  happy  ending. 

This  novel  is  throughout  pathetic,  but  it  contains  a  great 
deal  of  broad  humor  and  deserves  its  sub-title,  "The  Comedy 
of  a  Romantic.  " 


LITTLE,  BROWN  &  CO.,  PUBLISHERS 
3<t  BEACON  STREET,  BOSTON 


The  Racial  Characteristics  of  French  and  English 


THE  LITTLE  BELOVED 


By  W.  L.  GEORGE 

12mo.     Cloth.     $1.50  net 


Not  since  Thackeray,  indeed,  has  any  English  novelist  done  a 
more  impressive  study  of  the  typical  Englishman.  It  is  not 
only  a  good  story;  it  is  a  notable  study  of  national  character.  — 
Baltimore  Sun. 

Not  merely  a  splendid  opportunity  for  contrast  between  the 
temperamental  differences  of  French  and  English,  but  a  narrative 
of  earnest  merit.  We  are  met  by  a  full  world  of  English  char- 
acters. —  New  York  Post. 

First  and  last,  interesting.  It  is  crowded  with  impressions, 
glimpses,  and  opinions.  There  are  many  characters  and  they 
are  all  living.  .  .  .  Reading  his  book  is  a  real  adventure,  by 
no  means  to  be  missed.  —  New  York  Times. 

A  vigorous  novel  based  upon  the  process  —  constructive  and 
destructive — whereby  a  typical  French  youth,  mercurial,  pas- 
sionate, spectacular,  is  transformed  into  a  staid  and  stolid 
English  householder  and  husband.  —  Chicago  Herald. 

Mr.  George,  one  of  the  most  promising  of  the  younger  English 
writers,  has  shown  the  process  of  naturalization  from  a  more 
striking  viewpoint,  in  this  story  of  the  changing  of  a  Frenchman 
into  an  English  citizen.  With  this  purpose  and  his  nervous, 
irritable  nature  trouble  is  sure  to  ensue,  and  he  has  adventures  in 
plenty.  —  Boston  Transcript. 


LITTLE,  BROWN  &  CO.,  PUBLISHERS 
34  BEACON  STREET,  BOSTON 


By  the  Author  of  "The  Stranger's  Wedding" 


THE  SECOND  BLOOMING 


By  W.  L.  GEORGE 

12  mo.    438  pages.    $1.60  net 


A  strong  and  thoughtful  story.  —  New  York  World. 

A  story  of  amazing  power  and  insight.  —  Washington  Evening 
Star. 

Mr.  George  is  one  of  the  Englishmen  to  be  reckoned  with. 
One  now  says  Wells,  Galsworthy,  Bennett — and  W.  L.  George. 

— New  York  Globe. 

This  writer  has  entered  with  more  courage  and  intensity  into 
the  inner  sanctuaries  of  life  than  Mr.  Howells  and  Mr.  Bennett 
have  cared  to  do.  —  Chicago  Tribune. 

Mr.  George  follows  a  vein  of  literary  brilliancy  that  is  all  his 
own,  and  his  study  of  feminine  maturity  will  find  ample  vindica- 
tion the  round  world  over.  —  Philadelphia  North  American. 

It  is  a  book  which  is  bound  to  appeal  to  women,  for  it  is  so 
extraordinarily  true  to  life ;  so  many  women  have  passed  and  are 
passing  through  remarkably  similar  experiences.  —  London 
Evening  Standard. 

It  is  perhaps  the  biggest  piece  of  fiction  that  the  present  season 
has  known.  The  present  reviewer  may  frankly  say,  without  exag- 
geration, that  he  has  not  had  a  treat  of  similar  order  since  the  still 
memorable  day  when  he  first  made  the  acquaintance  of  Mr. 
Galsworthy's  "Man  of  Property." — Frederic  T.  Cooper  in  the 
Bookman  (N.  Y.). 


LITTLE,  BROWN  &  CO.,  PUBLISHERS 
34  BEACON  STREET,  BOSTON 


"Once  read,  will  not  quickly  be  forgotten."  —  Providence  Journal. 


UNTIL  THE  DAY  BREAK 


By  W.  L.  GEORGE 

12  mo.     Cloth.     $1.50  net. 


Mr.  George's  study  of  the  evolution  of  this  Israel  Kalisch  is  a 
remarkable  work  in  realistic  fiction.  —  New  York  World. 

A  novel  of  more  than  usual  value.  .  .  .  It  is  a  life-drama, 
such  as  is  going  on  continually  in  London  and  New  York.  — 
Hearst's  Magazine. 

The  story  contains  a  very  pretty  love  element  .  .  .  Such  an 
objective  picture  as  is  here  presented  will  do  more  than  sermons 
to  reveal  the  futility  of  the  sacrifice  which  anarchy  sometimes 
makes  of  noble  minds.  —  New  York  Post. 

Mr.  George  unquestionably  has  the  gift  of  description,  not 
only  of  places  but  of  men.  Kalisch,  egotistic,  self-confident, 
fearless,  making  his  way  from  Gallicia  through  Hungary  to  starve 
and  fight  in  New  York,  is  an  impressive  conception.  —  The 
Bookman. 

Israel,  Warsch,  Leimeritz,  the  various  women  who  successively 
love  Israel,  they  are  so  true,  so  vital  that  we  can  almost  see  and 
hear  them  speak  and  breathe.  Yes,  this  is  a  great  novel,  even 
though  it  alternately  fires  and  freezes  the  very  marrow  of  the 
•oul.  —  Chicago  Herald. 


LITTLE,  BROWN  &  CO.,  PUBLISHERS 
34  BEACON  STREET,  BOSTON 


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